ABSTRACT
Surface compaction typically has been thorough enough to submerge completely all temper grains (76% of surfaces) and to remove traces of tool use (84% of surfaces). The attention to thorough evening (the leveling of surface humps and dips) and compaction of surfaces, on undecorated and thick vessel walls as well as on finer ware, gives this assemblage the feel of well-made pottery. The qualities of “hard” and “well-fired” fabrics that often have been ascribed to early Saladoid pottery, however, are not confirmed by observations here. Many Assemblage 1 sherds, in fact, yield easily to fracturing for an edge sample (31%), and most have wide dark cores. Sherds amounting to another 27 percent of the sample are friable on fracture edges, probably due to the coarse and rounded shape of aplastic inclusions in most sherds.
