Ancestral Pueblo · Black-on-white olla
Socorro Black-on-white is a Pueblo II painted type from central New Mexico, and this piece is a large globular storage olla with a short constricted neck and a design that runs unbroken around the body. Identification here rests on the painted surface rather than the profile: dense fine-line hachure set against solid black fields, worked into interlocking scroll-and-step figures. It is the Academy’s first vessel lesson, and the first that asks you to read decoration rather than stone.