Creek Pottery

Creek Pottery. . Pottery is the most plentiful type of artifact left behind by the Creeks and their ancestors and one of the few physical connections we have to their communities which once stood throughout the Chattahoochee Valley. Sherds and intact earthen vessels discovered through archaeology are critical in documenting the Creek peoples and play an important role in illuminating many details about their daily life that might otherwise be lost to history. For example, pottery can help us understand what the Creeks ate and how they prepared their food, their tastes in art, and even to some degree their societal structure and religious beliefs. , Women and girls made almost all of the pottery produced by the Creeks. Drawing on extensive knowledge of pottery making passed down over generations, Creek potters sought out very specific clays for the various uses in which the vessels they formed were designed to serve. They were also knowledgeable in the complicated processes involved in producing pottery in certain desired shapes and featuring special textures and colors. Creek women often tempered, or strengthened, their pottery with materials such as sand, bone, and shell for appearance and durability. The exterior of pieces of pottery might be decorated with stamping or incising (decorations formed by making small cuts) and sometimes painted using pigments. , The majority of Creek pottery forms can be described as bowls, bottles and jars. They would have been used in the cooking and storing of food, especially stews and soups and other dishes including corn, beans, nuts, and other fruits and vegetables they cultivated or harvested in the wild. On certain special occasions in Creek communities, older clay vessels might be ceremonially discarded and new pots brought into use. So central to Creek life was pottery that it was sometimes included in the goods that were buried along with the dead to symbolically ease the transition of the deceased into the afterlife. , Source: Archaeology of the Lower Muskogee Creek Indians, 1715-1836, by H. Thomas Foster, II , Included here are illustrations of whole or mostly intact earthen vessels produced by Creeks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and discovered by professional archaeologists. They are representative samples of a few of the several major recognized styles of Creek pottery produced in this area during the approximately 150 years prior to Removal. While these styles have much in common with pottery produced by Native Americans for thousands of years, they contain unique details in form, material, tempering and decoration, that allow them to be dated to this specific era and region. , Image captions: , (Top, left): Ocmulgee Fields incised casuela bowl. Courtesy of Dr. H. Thomas Foster, II , (Top, center): Fragment of Ocmulgee Fields water jug. Courtesy of Dr. H. Thomas Foster, II , (Top, right): Plain bowl and inverted bowl. Courtesy of Dr. H. Thomas Foster, II , (Bottom, left): Ocmulgee Fields incised casuela bowl. Courtesy of Dr. H. Thomas Foster, II. , (Bottom, center left): Chattahoochee Brushed Jar. Courtesy of Dr. H. Thomas Foster, II , (Bottom, center right): Kasita Red Filmed Vessel. Courtesy of Fort Benning and Panamerican Consultants , (Bottom, right): Ocmulgee Fields incised casuele bowl. Courtesy of Dr. H. Thomas Foster, II