Melvin Juanico remembers his grandmother making traditional Acoma pottery during the summers he spent with her at Sky City, the nearly 1,000-year-old village and National Trust Historic Site in Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. “We would collect dried cow patties to burn for the firing process,” he recalls. “They would make a dome out of a metal grid and broken pottery pieces.”

Juanico’s grandmother was following a time-honored technique created by her ancestors. Acoma artisans would collect clay from certain places on their land, mix it with finely ground shards of old pottery, soak the mix in water, and hand-form vessels with thin yet sturdy walls. After the pieces dried, they would apply a white earth slip made of sandstone dirt strained through cloth, polish the surfaces with smooth stones, and paint designs using a brush made from a yucca plant.

The geometric designs often contained fine lines representing rain, and orange bands at the bottom and top of the vessel to symbolize the sun—as with the historic Acoma pottery pieces shown. “Because it was believed that the sun rotates around Mother Earth, we have the [orange] above and below,” Juanico says. “Our ancestors made pottery every day—mostly women, but some men, too. They needed pottery to store water and cook in. It’s how our ancestors survived.”