TARASCAN POTTERY PRODUCTION IN MICHOACÁN, MEXICO An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective (2016) (original) (raw)

Pottery is one of the most important inventions of humankind. It is thousands of years old, and it is fair to say that without pottery the development of civilization as we know it would have been impossible. Food preparation and storage, religion and ritual, wine making, trade, art, and architecture, among many other human achievements, were all aided by pottery, an artificial material that lent itself to making all kinds of objects, including vessels, figurines, roof tiles, water pipes, fishnet weights, inscribed tablets with the earliest forms of writing, and many other things, in an endless example of human creativity. In recent years high-tech ceramics are used in myriad applications, all of them indispensable for communication, computers, medicine, art, and many more uses than we could list here. This book is about a contemporary Mesoamerican pottery tradition, but it also looks back at the earliest examples of cultural development in this area. By means of ethnographic analogy, this study tries to shed light on a modern indigenous community and on ethnoarchaeological theory, method and practice, undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of archaeological research in Mexico today.