Sunday Eiselt
Heroy Hall, Room 419
(214) 768-2915
seiselt@smu.edu
Sunday joined Southern Methodist University as a Visiting Assistant Professor after receiving her
Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2006. With a specialization in Archaeology, she has studied in
numerous geographic regions including Mexico, the U.S. Southwest, California, and the Great Basin. Her
research interests include archaeological ceramics and pottery manufacturing, the historical archaeology
of Native People of the Southwest, and the effects of Colonialism on Indigenous cultural identities and
traditions in the Spanish Borderlands region. Some of her other interests include Archaic Period and
Historic Period Rock Art as these relate to symbolic landscape ideologies and oral history.
Over the past nine years, she has worked with numerous micaceous potters in New Mexico to study
traditional clay prospecting, harvesting, and production techniques, and she has conducted an extensive
micaceous clay source survey with the help of these potters. This survey included geochemical testing of
clay source and ceramic samples to reveal the complex development of New Mexico’s micaceous pottery
tradition from A.D. 1300 to the present as well as the role of female labor in sustaining household
economies.
This work includes a special interest in the transformation of micaceous pottery from a humble
culinary ware - traded largely between rural women during the historic era - to its spectacular entry
into the modern Art Market during the late 1990s. A special interest in ceramics and archaeology have
allowed her to examine issues of multiculturalism in the Spanish borderlands including the impact of
colonization on the Jicarilla Apache and other mounted horse nomads of the region from an archaeological
perspective. As one of the leading experts on micaceous pottery of the northern Rio Grande, she has
assisted in cases involving Pueblo rights to traditional clay pits threatened by industrial mining.
For more information, you may visit Sunday Eiselt's personal
home page here.
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