The potter’s magic fingers
With her small, strong hands, Wilma Tosa worked the dark gray clay across an old canvas cloth, folding in cups of water until the soft, kneaded material made a clean break in her hand. “If it bends, it’s too watery,” said the Native American potter, breaking off a small piece and using her fingertips to form it into a long snake. “Maybe you have something on your mind, and it will shape itself.” As she started to coil the snake around a clay base, students from the “Fundamentals of Archaeological Methods and Reasoning” course taught by Matt Liebmann, John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, and Rowan K. Flad, John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology, watched mesmerized before trying to replicate Tosa’s handiwork. “We often discuss cultural artifacts from an archaeological perspective — examining them, dating them, putting the pieces back together to gauge their significance,” said Landy...