Coconino Gray is a type of Tusayan Gray Ware found across the greater part of northern Arizona and southern Utah.

Archaeological Culture: Ancestral Puebloan, Kayenta

Date Range: Kayenta Heartland: A.D. 950-1100 (Christenson 1994), Flagstaff Area: A.D. 1025-1075 (per Christian Downum, Northern Arizona University).

Construction: By coiling.

Firing: In a reducing atmosphere.

Core Color: Light gray.

Carbon Streak: Rare.

Temper: Abundant medium-fine to coarse quartz sand; occasionally some feldspar; conspicuous on both surfaces.

Surface Finish: Very rough; scraped; not smoothed; not polished; often deeply pitted; scraping marks conspicuous; neck coils unobliterated on exterior surfaces, emphasized by horizontal tooling marks creating channels of roughly semi-circular section and producing fluted effect; coils vary from 1.5 to 6 mm in width; body and base plain.

Surface Color: Gray.

Forms: Jars.

Vessel Thickness: 2.9 to 6 mm; average 4.3 mm.

Decoration: No painted decoration; neck coils unobliterated and tooled.

Comparisons: Lino Gray, Kana’a Gray, and Medicine Gray are never tooled; body and base sherds are indistinguishable. Honani Tooled necks are decorated with linear tooling marks in series; body and base sherds are indistinguishable. O’Leary Tooled necks are decorated with indentations or punching without tooled channels; body and base sherds are indistinguishable. Kiet Siel Gray usually has coarser temper with small quantities of opaque angular fragments, less well-smoothed surfaces (usually bumpy), coils that are generally not quite obliterated, and thicker vessel walls.

Compiled from the following sources:
Christenson, Andrew. (1994) A Test of Mean Ceramic Dating Using Well-Dated Kayenta-Anasazi Sites. Kiva 59 (3).

Colton, Harold S. (1955) Pottery Types of the Arizona Strip and Adjacent Areas in Utah and Nevada. Museum of Northern Arizona Ceramic Series No. 1. Flagstaff, Arizona

Compiled by:
April Peters, Northern Arizona University Anthropology Laboratories.