Households, Crafts, and Feasting in the Ancient Andes: The Village Context of Early Nasca Craft Consumption (original) (raw)
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Polychrome Pottery Economics and Ritual Life in Postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico.
Tututepec fue una capital regional que dominó gran parte del sur de Oaxaca, México, en el Posclásico tardío (1100–1522 d.C.). Este artículo sintetiza los resultados de los análisis de la composición (análisis por activación neutrónica y petrografía), estilo e iconografía de la cerámica de las excavaciones de conjuntos habitacionales de la gente común en Tututepec para abordar cuestiones sobre la producción y la distribución de cerámica, y también para aclarar los aspectos de la economía política y ritual doméstica en la capital. El estudio se centra más intensamente en la cerámica polícroma Mixteca-Puebla, vasijas para servir con motivos decorativos complejos. Nuestros análisis de la composición, interpretados a la luz de la geología de la región, indican que la gente común obtuvo entre seis y diez variedades distintas de cerámica, manufacturadas con materias primas disponibles localmente— dentro o alrededor de Tututepec. Planteamos que en los conjuntos habitacionales probablemente se adquirió la cerámica a través de un mercado central localizado en la capital. Además, nuestro estudio demuestra que la gente común tenía acceso a la cerámica polícroma fabricada por varios alfareros, desafiando la idea generalizada de que estas vasijas fueron restringidas a las élites, quienes controlaban su producción. Proponemos que las vasijas polícromas de servir jugaron un papel destacado en los rituales domésticos ordinarios. Aún más, los comuneros parecen haber seleccionado conscientemente las vasijas pintadas con imágenes asociadas con la guerra y el sacrificio, lo que sugiere que apoyaron activamente la ideología imperial oficial de Tututepec.
The Substance and Context of Paracas Ceramic Ritual Offerings (English)
Boletin de Pontificía Universidad la Católica del Perú, 2013
The Paracas (ca. 900 BCE) of south coastal Peru are widely recognized for ceramics bearing patterned designs that were incised and post-fire painted. Analyses of containers, effigies, figurines, and musical instruments recovered intact in tombs, have centered largely on temporal and iconographic concerns, and in evaluating prestige. A number of archaeological contexts offer an alternative view of ceramics and their significance in public and domestic spheres. In this paper, the role of ceramics in ritual offerings is discussed and analyzed in tandem with the other forms and mediums they accompany. The contexts for these offerings differ from those of funerary ritual in which whole vessels are placed with the dead. These analyses indicate that the end cycle of ceramics is diverse, that their substance is valued in whole and fragmentary form, and that their spatial orientation is significant. Insights are offered into how ceramics as substances interact and complement other materials in offerings and how this bears upon our interpretation of specific iconographies and design symbols and their respective meanings.
During Prehistory, pottery represents above all a practical production, although with a functional meaning that stretches beyond its utilitarian feature. It points out a series of specific activities that could be exclusively economic, but could be symbolic, ideological, aesthetic and ritual as well – being also assumed as an expression of prestige and social distinction. It is an element that reflects for itself a set of daily actions and behaviours of a community, inseparable from the modus vivendi of the First Agro‐Pastoral Societies (from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age) – inclusively accompanying the agents of a human group in the funerary contexts. Right from its first productions in Early Neolithic, pottery corresponds to the archaeological remain better represented in the artefactual record. Its practical inutility once broken, its resistence and preservation capacity confers to pottery sherds an almost “ubiquitous” part of the archaeological record. As archaeographical data, this artefacual category is traditionaly used in research to establish chrono‐cultural sequences, although it can offer other perspetives throughout a detailed process of analysis, classification, ordination and interpretation. Even if we can attend to the construction of new and renovated questionnaires for Material Cultural analysis over the last years, they were not yet enough to overlap some of the methodological limitations inherent to the studies of pottery in prehistoric contexts in Iberia, such as: – In the archaeological speech, pottery elements are usually used as means for chronological definition, conditioning their whole informative potential, particularly in what concerns the purpose of artefact’s production, as well as the entire subsequent Technological Process; – The criteria for the Sample Selection not always are illustrative, their suitability to the different kinds of contexts and their representativity in the totality of the ceramic set in study are not so evident; – The need for Normalize methologies and criteria of analysis, enabling the procedure of the indispensable comparative studies, even if one can recognize that each pottery set has an identity related to the chrono‐cultural and geographic scope in which it was produced and with the archaeological context in which it was identified; – The predominance of macroscopical analysis, disclosing generic readings about pastes (temper and firing) and rarely resorting to tools from another disciplinary fields such as Archaeometry, mainly due to its costs, but also to the unawareness about the informative potential to which we can accede; JIA 2015 VIII YOUNG RESEARCHERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE Between science and culture: from interdisciplinarity to the transversality of archaeology – The frail expression of Experimental Archaeology, a tool that allows a more complete approach to the production process of the pottery elements and their functionality, providing a high coefficient of information; – The studies that look for elements to understand and explain the processes of Archaeological Site Formation in pottery sherds are still very inconsistent, as well as for the definition of the possible functionality of a site (resorting to the analysis of preservation condition of artefacts and in the dimension of sherds, together with their spatial distribution in the excavated areas. With the organization of this session, we intend to promote an extended reflection about the issues listed above and in the presentation of new data framed by the following subjects: – Analysis of the Chaîne Opératoire models (areas of raw‐material procurement; technological modalities of artefactual production; functionality; manipulation; contexts of use, deposition and discard); – Typological Classification; – Decorative Processes and Systems (social, functional, artistic and/or cultural dimension); – Pottery as an element of Chronological Definition and evaluation of the importance/pertinence of eventual “chrono‐cultutal indicators” in the scientific speech in terms of their precision; ‐ Identification of Continuities and Ruptures in the pottery production in Time and Space; ‐ Analysis of eventual Exchange and Circulation Networks; ‐ Interdisciplinarity, resorting to studies in the fields of Archaeometry, Anthropology and Ethnography. The choice for pottery as the principal focus of this session is justifiable by the fact that ceramic studies are one of the main subjects of the archaeological research of the First Agro‐Pastoral Societies. It is also substantiated because the category/type of archaeological data in which pottery is included, in its material dimension, constitutes a privileged link between the fields of the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences, where the study of Material Culture has now acquired special importance over the last years. Therefore, beginning with an essentially, but not exclusively, archaeological overview, our proposal, with the organization of this session, is to discuss the adoption of an in‐depth analysis frame, crossing contributes from different disciplinary areas that, with specific perspectives, work on the fields of Material Culture (namely, of prehistoric pottery). From the Natural Sciences, in their most analytic aspect, to the Social Sciences, Anthropology in particular, we assume this session as an opportunity for dialogue and establishment of broad connections and collaborations in Material Culture studies.
2008
How and why do ceramics and their production change through time? Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution in a Maya Community is a unique ethno- archaeological study that attempts to answer these questions by tracing social change among potters and changes in the production and distribution of their pottery in a single Mexican community between 1965 and 1997. Dean E. Arnold made ten visits to Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico, witnessing the changes in transportation infrastructure, the use of piped water, and the development of tourist resorts. Even in this context of social change and changes in the demand for pottery, most of the potters in 1997 came from the families that had made pottery in 1965. This book traces changes and continuities in that population of potters, in the demand and distribution of pottery, and in the procurement of clay and temper, paste composition, forming, and firing. In this volume, Arnold bridges the gap between archaeology and ethnography, using his analysis of contemporary ceramic production and distribution to generate new theoretical explanations for archaeologists working with pottery from antiquity. When the descriptions and explanations of Arnold's findings in Ticul are placed in the context of the literature on craft specialization, a number of insights can be applied to the archaeological record that confirm, contradict, and nuance generalizations concerning the evolution of ceramic specialization. This book will be of special interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnoarchaeologists, ethnographers, and those scholars interested in social change and ceramic production. Although addressing the theme of how production and distribution changes through a period of 32 years, the work is placed in the context of the parameters of craft production and specialization by Costin addressing its strengths and weaknesses. Several chapters are organized as critiques of current theories of technological choice that potters can make any vessel using any technique (van der Leeuw) and whether elite control of ceramic raw materials results in a standardized paste (Rice). One of the more interesting conclusions from the book is that in spite of massive social changes during the last third of the twentieth century, pottery production is still largely organized by households, and the learning and residence of potters still largely conforms to a kin-based model, although such patterns are highly nuanced. The work also shows that different aspects of ceramic production changes at different rates, and one of the consequences of change is the break-up of ceramic production into specialized tasks over time. Throughout the book, the implications of the work for the study of ancient ceramic production is discussed. This is a unique book that chronicles long-term change in ceramic production, and distribution thrugh the last third of the twentieth century, and shows the implication of these data to the study of ceramic production and cultural change in antiquity. (The Table of Contents and the Introduction to the book can be accessed from the publisher's website for the book. Interested parties should click on the link (upcolorado.com) above, and then click on "TOC and sample chapter" at the bottom ("Download Attachments") of the ad the book.)
In this dissertation I use the theoretical framework of ritual economy combined with ceramic analysis to understand the function and meaning of the introduction of orange slipped pottery to the Holmul Region during the second half of the Terminal Preclassic period (AD 150 – 250). I test the hypothesis that orange slipped pottery represents an amalgam of restricted or “prestige technologies” that were initially employed in the production of vessels used in potential elite diacritical feasting events of the Terminal Preclassic period. These vessels are here considered social valuables with various functions including the serving of symbolically charged foods during feasting events, mementos of ritual occasions, inalienable possessions that created social liens between owners and custodians, funerary furniture, and ritual cache objects. Using a specifically tailored methodology including aspects of type-variety analysis, modal analysis, diversity and standardization studies, petrograph...
Polish Contributions in New World Archaeology, 2008
The paper discusses Moche and Nasca pottery featuring forms of religious representation. In the Andean cultures, pottery was the means of information transfer and even played the role of a script. The vessels included in the Barcelona collection present splendid examples of ritual pottery decorated with forms of mythological representation. Anthropomorphic representations, as well as vessels depicting erotic and narrative scenes functioned as a specifi c tool used for transferring cultural messages. The variety of complex representations of mythical creatures, hybrids and trophy heads used by the Nasca society refl ected the complexity of Nasca religious life, while the frequently reoccurring fi gure of the Anthropomorphic Mythical Being may suggest that the Nasca culture was in fact a theocracy. Moreover, a detailed analysis of decorative motifs leads us to a deeper understanding of the rules according to which pre-Columbian civilizations functioned and provides ample information about the various aspects of life as it was lived by the societies of the Early Intermediate Period.