My aunt she use to always to tap my hands and
she goes, I love your hands, and she used
to go like this to me and one time I
asked her, you know, what's the difference?
And she said, you just have hands that
you know how to work with your pottery.
We brought in some friends of mine who
are traditional potters from the Pueblo of
Jemez in New Mexico. Willa has been
making pottery since she was five years
old. She still practices handmade
coiled pottery as her ancestors did more
than a thousand years ago. This year we
were fortunate enough to come here to
show how handmade pottery is made and
what kind of clay we use and everything
traditional that I do.
In archeology we usually study ceramics
and pottery after it's been broken and
used up and buried in the ground for a
couple thousand years, and so we wanted
the students to see the process from the
beginning, how pottery is made and how
potters design it and make it out of
clay. One of the great things about
anthropology 1010 is that we have this big
hands-on component, so it's just as
academic they're just using different
tools to learn and I think it's really
important to incorporate their hands as
well as their their brains in learning
how these artifacts are made.
