Throughout history when a type of pottery stops being made, the know-how required to make it is often lost. That was true in the American Southwest as it was in ancient Greece and many other places and times in history. In modern times artists and archaeologists have taken an interest in rediscovering these lost ancient technologies and have gone about trying to decode the puzzles left in the ancient pottery. This website is the result of many years of hard work by many people, both artists and scientists, working to better understand how ancient people lived and worked and to resurrect the lost potters arts that they left behind.
My name is Andy Ward and I am the face behind AncientPottery.how. I have been creating primitive pottery for over thirty years, learning from some of the best practitioners in this field. along with a lot of trial and error.
I have lectured about and taught prehistoric pottery replication and experimental archaeology all over the Southwest, here are a few of those places.
- El Paso Museum of Archaeology, 2018, El Paso, TX
- SW Kiln Conference, 2014 – 2017, Tijeras, NM, Safford, AZ, Springerville, AZ
- Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve, 2015, 2018, Phoenix, AZ
- Silver City Clay Festival, 2015, Silver City, NM
- Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School, 2015 – 2019, Cliff, NM
- Cochise County Corral of Westerners, 2018, Tombstone, AZ
- Mesa Grande Cultural Park, 2017, 2019, Mesa, AZ
- Besh Ba Gowah Archaeological Park, 2015, 2016, Globe, AZ
- Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, 2014 – 2019, Tucson, AZ
When I was a young man struggling to learn all I could about how to recreate prehistoric pottery, there were very few opportunities available to me because I could not afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a workshop. I would have loved something like AncientPottery.how back then. It is my hope that this website becomes a resource that artists use to learn new methods and that archaeologists use to better understand how ancient people made pottery.
