Proto-Sikyatki: An Ancestral Hopi Transition

This Jeddito Black-on-Yellow bowl came from Homol'ovi I and exhibits a form of vessel design layout that Patrick Lyons termed Sikyatki Style E, which features asymmetrical images of nonanthropomorphic lifeforms (Lyons 2003:56). Vessels in this style are common in later occupation levels at Homol'ovi Cluster villages and include both Jeddito Black-on-Yellow and Sikyatki Polychrome types. Sikyatki Styles A, B, C, D,
 and F are also known from Lyons sample from Homol'ovi Cluster villages (Lyons 2003:56), and I have seen several in Sikyatki Style F from Homol'ovi Cluster villages and a Sikyatki Style B vessel from Tuzigoot, occupied around the same time.

Kelley Hays-Gilpin does not define these layouts as Sikyatki Style (Hays-Gilpin 2014:182-183). She focuses on asymmetry, but also on motifs, which include naturalistic butterfiles, stylized dragonflies, katsinam, flowers, birds, feathers, brocade-like textiles and elongated curved elements (Hays-Gilpin 2014:182). In her sample, she identified these only in later Sikyatki Polychrome vessels from the Hopi Mesas. However I personally have seen Sikyatki Style feathers on an earlier Jeddito Black-on-Yellow jar from Homol'ovi I, depictions of katsinam on a Sikyatki Polychrome bowl from Homol'ovi II, and on a Jeddito Black-on-Yellow bowl from Homol'ovi I, dragonflies on a Sikyatki Polychrome bowl from the Homol'ovi Cluster and elongated curved elements, feathers and an asymmetrical layout on a bowl from the Homol'ovi Cluster on display at Homol'ovi State Park. Many more vessels fit into Lyons (2003:55-56) conception of Sikyatki Style, but it is notable that these vessels fit even Hays-Gilpins' (2014:180-183) conception of Sikyatki Style. Compared to some vessels she illustrates (Hays-Gilpin 2014:Figure 2) the above examples are either more symmetrical or less dense in layout than her examples of Sikyatki Style, however several clearly fit, especially the vessel from the state park museum, which resembles a vessel she illustrates from Awat'ovi (Hays-Gilpin 2014:Figure 1).

I propose this disparity is due not to a difference in sample between Lyons (2003) and Hays-Gilpin (2014), but rather due to the existence of a Proto-Sikyatki Style that exists from CE 1375-1450 (Hays-Gilpin 2014:183) and can be observed on vessels at Homol'ovi Cluster villages. This explains the occurrence of Sikyatki Style feather motifs in Jeddito Style layouts and the less dense design fields. It is a time of experimentation, leading into the Sikyatki Style of Hays-Gilpin (2014). Katsinam faces first appear in this period, and are variously called Early Sikyatki Style B, and given a Jeddito design style (Hays-Gilpin 2014:Figure 2) or Sikyatki Style F (Lyons 2003:56). It seems prudent to not call clear katsinam portraits a Jeddito Style trait, but rather to put it as one of Sikyatki Style, given it seems to first appears in this transitional period. In sum, discrepencies in descriptions of Sikyatki Style are likely due to a Proto-Sikyatki Style that straddles stylistic lines and is open to being interpreted different ways by different analysts.

References Cited

Hays-Gilpin, Kelley
2014 Sikyatki Polychrome: Style, Iconography, Cross-Media Comparisons and Organization of Production. Kiva 79(2):175-204.

Lyons, Patrick D.
2003 Ancestral Hopi Migrations. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona Number 68. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.