Designs on Prehistoric Hopi Pottery

Jesse Walter Fewkes was the Smithsonian archaeologist whose 1890s excavations at Sikyatki, on First Mesa in Hopi country, brought to light the bold polychrome wares that would later inspire Nampeyo and the entire Hopi pottery revival. This Dover volume gathers his Bureau of American Ethnology plates, more than 250 illustrations of birds, clouds, lightning, and the geometric forms the ancient potters used, drawn directly from the vessels themselves.

Issued by Dover in 1973 as an unabridged republication of Fewkes's reports on Sikyatki and the Archeological Expedition to Arizona, the edition reprints in black and white plates that were color in the originals while preserving the full body of designs. The cover's golden Sikyatki jar, with its keyed and stepped motifs, signals exactly what is inside. It remains a working reference for anyone studying Hopi iconography, and it put these designs into wide circulation.