From Dean Wilson at the Southwest Ceramic Typology Project: Red Mesa Black-on-white was defined by Gladwin (1945). Pottery assigned to this type reflects a very important and widespread development for which the full nature of the origin and spread is still not well understood. Red Mesa Black-on-white was the most common pottery recovered during investigations of the Chaco Project (Toll and McKenna 1997), and also appears to be a very common type in areas of the Puerco of the west drainage (Hays-Gilipin and van Hartesveldt 1998). Examples of this typeassigned to the Puerco Valley variety of this type exhibit porous gray, dark gray or gray-brown pastes indicative of the use of high iron clays and abundant sherd temper. Pottery exhibiting characteristics commonly used to defined Red Mesa Black-on-white is also widely scattered not only reflecting a large portion of the decorated pottery dating to the tenth century sites across the Colorado Plateau, as well as that in sites in the Northern Mogollon, Rio Abajo, Northern Jornada and Northern Rio Grande regions. Thus, white wares associated with a number of regional traditions across the Southwest seem to have developed out of similar forms of Red Mesa Black-on-white.

From Oppelt (2007): The temper in this type is sherd and sand and sometimes sherd only. The paint is black to brown mineral. Forms of this type are bowls, jars, pitchers, ladles, and the surface is thinly slipped and usually polished. Lines are of medium width. The motifs include chevrons, triangles with pendent dots, scrolls, checkerboards, squiggle hatching, scalloped edged triangles and nests of fine line squares. Pendent dots are very common in this type. Designs are often banded and rims are painted black. This type is most common in the upper Rio Puerco of the West and the Chaco drainages.