Pottery is an ancient art. The earliest found pieces date back to 29,000 BCE. The earliest known pottery vessels are thought to be those found in Japan, dating to 10,500 BCE. Over the centuries, pottery has been used both as an expression of art and as an important skill. Archaeologists can learn a lot about a people from the kind of pottery they produced, including how a society was organized, the economic condition and cultural development of the society, the kind of daily life the people lived, and even how their people made sense of the universe.

In this video, Dolores, a 70 year old woman from Oaxaca, Mexico, demonstrates a method of making pottery. She shapes the clay on a pottery wheel until it is smooth and soft, creating the size and design that she wants. This piece will take her two days to shape, and when she is done it will be fired in a kiln and put to use in her community or in her home.