Deciphering Compositional Patterning in Plainware Ceramics from Late Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Sites in the Peninsular Ranges, San Diego County, California. (original) (raw)
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JAS Reports, 2016
The composition of 40 pottery sherds from three separate excavation units at the Late Prehistoric (ca. 1300–200 B.P.) hunter-gatherer habitation site of Mine Wash (CA-SDI-813) in eastern San Diego County has been characterised by a combination of thin section petrography and geochemistry and compared to a database of raw materials and additional ceramic artefacts from across the region. This reveals a compositionally diverse pottery assemblage that contains ceramics from several non-local sources in the Colorado Desert to the east and the nearby Peninsular Range mountains to the west. Possible cultural mechanisms for the movement of pottery to Mine Wash are assessed, including seasonal migration between different landscape zones along ethnohistoric trails, trade and exchange, and settlement shift due to subsistence stress. Additionally, intra-site compositional variation in ceramics across the three excavation units is considered as evidence for the co-habitation of the site by several different social groups of hunter-gatherers.
Diverse types of analysis and interpretive goals have been applied to aboriginal ceramics in the California deserts. This brief discussion focuses specifically on vessel forms as clues to functional patterns in the archaeological landscapes, and the contributions that can potentially be made at the level of field observations and basic laboratory analysis. Some previous approaches seem to suffer from poor replicability, too limited applicability, interpretive sterility, and/or insufficient documentation. An alternative focus on a small number of simple, relatively well-defined, and interpretively significant attributes is proposed. A few thoughts are offered here concerning the ways in which evidence from prehistoric ceramics is being generated and used in the California deserts region. First, the scope needs to be narrowed down a little: • There is a considerable range in general kinds of ceramic artifacts in this region, including pipes, figurines, rattles, anvils, and scoops, among others. The discussion here is just concerned the most abundantly represented kind of ceramics: pottery vessels, such as ollas, jars, bowls, canteens, and trays. • A considerable range of kinds of analyses have been applied to local pottery. Those analyses include studies of clays and inclusions (petrography, x-ray fluorescence, neutron activation analysis), manufacturing techniques (shaping by paddle-and-anvil vs. coil-and-scrape, firing in oxidizing vs. reducing atmospheres), residues (charcoal, cross-over immunoelectrophoresis), decoration (painting, incising, punctation, burnishing, appliqué), and physical dating (radiocarbon, luminescence). This discussion is limited to the vessels' forms. • Research objectives that have been addressed through local ceramic analyses include chronology, ethnic identity, patterns of mobility and exchange, and technology. The emphasis here is on the usefulness of this evidence to interpret site functions, and beyond those local functions to infer settlement patterning or landscape archaeology. • Finally, there are two main approaches to describing and classifying the results of ceramic analyses: classification by types, and classification by attributes. In previous papers it has been argued that there are serious drawbacks in the overuse or premature use of typologies (Laylander 2009, 2010; Laylander and Schaefer 2014; Schaefer and Laylander 2014). Those arguments are not repeated here, but the primary focus is on attributes and the choices made concerning which attributes to document and analyze. Malcolm J. Rogers and Michael R. Waters created typologies of vessel forms. Rogers did
Directions Forward for Ceramic Studies in the Far Southwest
2009
Aboriginal ceramics are a conspicuous and important element in the archaeological landscapes of late prehistoric southern California, western Arizona, southern Nevada, northern Baja California, and western Sonora. However, it can be argued that a full exploitation of the research value of the region's relatively simple and usually undecorated ceramics has been poorly served by some of the conventions in analysis, interpretation, and reporting that have been applied to them. Alternative approaches advocated here include a classification system based on attributes rather than types, an interpretive system based on formulating and testing falsifiable hypotheses, and a reporting system based on creative use of the Web.
Excavations at La Villa: Continuity and Change at an Agricultural Village, 2015
This is the first of two chapters that discuss the pottery recovered during recent excavations at La Villa, AZ T:12:148 (ASM). This collection was recovered from features in Madison Street and 13th Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona. A total of 14,103 sherds, representing a minimum of 3,819 vessels, were recovered from features located in five spatially demarcated areas. Painted Hohokam ceramic types comprise 25.1 percent of the sherds, red ware 1.4 percent, extrabasinal painted types 0.03 percent, plain ware 73.2 percent, and sherds of indeterminate ware 0.3 percent. The earliest painted Hohokam type present is Estrella Red-on-gray, the latest is Late Sacaton Red-on-buff, and, with the exception of Middle Sacaton 2 Red-on-buff, every intervening ceramic type is represented in the collection; all are well-illustrated. Limited use of the project area during the Classic period was documented in the current collection by the recovery of one Pinto, Gila, or Cliff Polychrome sherd. Interaction with people living in other portions of the Southwest is documented by the recovery of four extrabasinal ceramic types: Deadmans Black-on-red Ware from the San Juan River region of southeastern Utah/southwestern Colorado; Kiatuthlanna Black-on-white Ware from east-central Arizona/west-central New Mexico; Black Mesa or Sosi black-on-white Ware from northeastern Arizona; and Mogollon Red Ware from the mountain valleys and uplands on either side of the Arizona-New Mexico border. The polychrome sherd mentioned previously may also have been made elsewhere. The La Villa ceramic analysis focused on three issues: (1) feature and context dating; (2) change through time; and (3) evidence of ceramic production or exchange. The second and third issues are closely related and make extensive use of temper provenance and related data. Subsistence practices, as reflected in the metric and morphological vessel function data, primarily relate to the second research issue. The final portion of the chapter examines ceramic variability related to clay type, temper source, presence/absence of calcium carbonate, firing temperature and atmosphere, as well as the concentration and intensity of Middle Sacaton buff ware production.
Investigations by Malcolm J. Rogers of archaeological ceramics from southern California and the broader “Yuman” area beginning in the 1920s provide the foundation for all subsequent ceramic studies in the region. Although much information about his methods and analyses remains unpublished, his type collections and notes curated at the San Diego Museum of Man evidence efforts to develop a regional ceramic typology influenced by ethnographic observations. This paper describes how the work of Rogers has shaped studies by later researchers. Recently, larger sample sets and new analytical techniques are helping to refine and sometimes refute his early interpretations of archaeological ceramics. http://www.pcas.org/documents/4834Burton.pdf
Vessels for change: perspectives on the study of prehistoric ceramics in Baja California after
2016
Malcolm J. Rogers pioneered the study of prehistoric pottery in the Yuman region, recording important evidence, both archaeological and ethnographic, that otherwise would now be lost. Recent researchers have followed up on several aspects of Rogers’s work, elaborating or revising many of his original conclusions. As this work progresses, several key questions still need to be addressed: How long ago did local pottery-making begin? How far did its use extend prehistorically? What internal circumstances or external influences stimulated its adoption and set limits to its subsequent spread? Archaeologists continue to debate which of the attributes of pottery’s chemistry, mineralogy, manufacturing techniques, vessel forms, or decoration are most informative about issues relating to regional chronology, the identification of cultural traditions, prehistoric patterns of travel and exchange, and the functions of ceramics within the region’s native cultures. One of Rogers’s most important c...
2009
by Caitlin Anne Wichlacz Washington State University May 2009 Chair: Andrew I. Duff Cerro Pomo and Cox Ranch Pueblos, in west-central New Mexico, represent some of the southernmost examples of the Chacoan great house pattern, and are located within the northern reaches of the traditional Mogollon culture area. These great houses and the smaller sites around them exhibit a blend of characteristically Puebloan and Mogollon traits, evident in architectural patterns and in the use of both grey and brown ceramic utility wares. Grey corrugated wares are traditionally associated with Ancestral Pueblo peoples, and brown wares with the Mogollon. The coexistence of these suites of material culture traits within individual sites is a pattern that persists into later periods in the region. Settlements within this region of cultural overlap provide a unique opportunity for the study of identity and interaction along both spatial and historical scales. With that potential in mind, this work focus...
Ceramic style analysis in archaeology and ethnoarchaeology: Bridging the analytical gap
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 1989
A refitting study with a sample of sherds from Broken K Pueblo indicates that at least some of the "patterning" in the assemblage identified by Hill (1970, Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 18) results from unrecognized whole vessels and large conjoinable sherds. It is argued that contemporary stylistic analyses are based on many of the same analytical methods employed in the Broken K study and that research findings of ethnoarchaeology are rarely applied in the analysis of prehistoric ceramics. Despite archaeologists' increasing awareness of formation processes, spurred by ethnoarchaeological research, analytic methods that identify and take into account the effects of these processes on archaeological ceramic assemblages are underdeveloped. Suggestions are offered to resolve this problem, for both archaeological and ethnoarchaeological ceramic analysis, that may permit archaeologists to discover in prehistoric assemblages the same types of relationships identified in systemic assemblages.