PECOS 2017 Linking Pots to Production Zones: A Novel Provenience Model for PI Red Ware in Southeastern Utah (original) (raw)
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Utah Pottery Project researchers have undertaken to locate and characterize all of the pottery shops opened by immigrants between 1848 and 1930 in the United States of America’s Utah Territory and larger "Mormon Domain." This study integrates INAA-produced isotopic data extracted from production waste at manufacturing sites within sophisticated contextual research design of anthropological and historical questions about adaptation; technology, creativity and learning; trade and exchange; and social interaction. This research is a small model for the GlobalPottery movement. Scarlett, Timothy James, Amy M. Bastion, Leslie G. Cecil, Christopher W. Merritt, and Michael Glascock. (2015). A Muddy Study: Using Muddy Mission Ceramic Artifacts to Develop an Anthropological Historical Archaeology for the Utah Pottery Project. In Jaume Buxeda I Garrigós, Marisol Madrid i Fernández, and Javier G. Iñañez (eds.), GlobalPottery: Papers from the First International Congress on Historical Archaeology and Archaeometry for Societies in Contact. British Archaeological Reports (BAR), International Series 2761, BAR Press, Oxford
Pottery Southwest, 2022
The study of cultural interaction is often viewed within the context of material exchange in anthropology. Tracing the pathways of artifacts from their origin of manufacture to their point of deposition reveals patterns of interaction and exchange among prehistoric people. Previous archaeometric approaches in have been limited in their ability to source ceramics at such fine spatial scales as neighboring communities where the examination of interaction and exchange is most challenging. The study reported here focused on an archaeometric method aimed at solving this problem through examination of geological materials and prehistoric pottery sherds. The abbreviated results presented here highlight the relationship between two large Ancestral Puebloan sites, and reveal that pottery recovered from a site in southwest Colorado originated almost exclusively, from a single producer of red ware in Montezuma Canyon, Utah. The two sites are among nearly one hundred sites currently under evaluation in the study area, which covers some 3,500 km2 in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.
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.
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
Archaeometry, 2007
A lack of mineralogical variation characterizes the prehistoric pottery in the uplands of central Arizona. Virtually all of the ceramics in that region were tempered with phyllite, which has previously precluded provenance analyses and the investigation of pottery production and distribution in the upland zone. As shown with assays with an electron microprobe, however, both the clay fraction and the temper fragments are chemically diverse and geographically distinct, allowing many of the phyllite-tempered wares to be sourced, thereby leading to models about the organization of ceramic production and exchange in the upland zone north of the Phoenix Basin.
Compositional analysis of Intermountain Ware pottery manufacturing areas in western Wyoming, USA
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018
In this study we examine 50 sherds from four archaeological sites to understand ceramic vessel source area variation in western Wyoming. Intermountain Ware ceramics are a diagnostic marker of Shoshone ethnicity, and our central hypothesis explores changing mobility during the Late Prehistoric and Historic Periods, ca. 1500-1870 CE. We use neutron activation analysis (NAA) for bulk paste chemical analysis and thin-section petrography to characterize clay and temper mineralogy. NAA places ceramic artifacts into eight groups with little overlap between sites in southwest and northwest Wyoming. Temper composition supports NAA groups indicating that ceramic vessels in this sample were made locally and not transported long distances before their eventual discard.
San Juan Redware Economy: Tracking the Pottery of Montezuma Canyon to the Great Sage Plain
The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2019
Montezuma Canyon, in extreme southeast Utah, was home to large populations during the Basketmaker III through PIII period (AD 500-1300). Potters located throughout this deeply-incised, 73 km long north-south running canyon, produced San Juan Redware pottery in abundance well-beyond the needs of the village. Archaeometric evidence indicates that locally produced pottery at some sites moved in all directions and vessels were being carried out of the canyon as far as 75km away. Through analysis of pottery and clay found proximal to major sites, we traced the pathways of hundreds of sherds from producer to consumer. Population centers in southwestern Colorado imported large numbers of redware vessels from southeastern Utah, including those found in Montezuma Canyon. Although previous research may have identified patterns of interaction between villages through identification of geochemically-similar pottery recovered from sites in southeastern Utah and elsewhere, this research established provenience between the cultural landscape (ceramics) and the geographic landscape (clay). Thus, we identified villages that produced San Juan Redware and villages that consumed it within, and outside of, the canyon. By establishing the geochemical fingerprints of sherds and clay we continue to illuminate patterns of prehistoric exchange and social interaction among the Anasazi.
Archaeological Investigations at the Fort Lowell-Adkins Steel Property Locus of Fort Lowell, AZ BB:9:40 (ASM ), Tucson, Pima County, Arizona, 2013
This chapter discusses the prehistoric Native American pottery recovered from the Fort Lowell-Adkins Steel locus of the Hardy Site, AZ BB:9:40 (ASM). A total of 6,783 sherds, representing no fewer than 750 vessels, were recovered from the locus. Ceramic types belonging to the Tucson Basin Hohokam red-on-brown, red, polychrome, and plain, Middle Gila Hohokam red-on-buff, and Mimbres Mogollon black-on-white ware series are reported upon. The decorated ceramics recovered from the Fort Lowell-Adkins Steel locus suggest that this portion of the Hardy Site was occupied from the beginning of the Middle Rincon phase up to sometime early in the Tanque Verde phase. Four research issues are addressed. First, feature and context dating. Second, ceramic production and distribution as reflected in temper provenance and related data. Third, subsistence practices as reflected in vessel function data. Fourth, refinement of the current Tucson Basin ceramic typology.
Journal of Archaeological Science Vol. 39(2):321-331, 2012
This study addresses buff-firing clay sources in dynamic alluvial settings along Arizona’s Gila River. We establish clay resource distribution relative to the geomorphic histories of the Lower and Middle Gila River based on 38 clay samples and ethnographic data from two US Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) projects. Buff-firing clayey alluvium, deposited in the Gila River floodplain 800 to 1,500 or more years ago, was a surficial ceramic raw material source for prehistoric Hohokam and lowland Patayan potters. This geomorphic unit was later removed in some places and buried by up to 3-4 m of sediment in others, reducing the availability of buff-firing clays in the Hohokam Classic period and requiring historic Pee Posh and Akimel O’odham potters to dig pits to access it. Sources were further destroyed in catastrophic floods in the late 19th and early 20th century, affecting ceramic manufacture patterns and ultimately contributing to the decline of pottery production by the O’odham living in the Gila River Valley. Our results contribute to regional ceramic ecology and should also be of interest to others investigating alluvial clay use in general or buff-firing alluvial clays in particular. The study also illustrates the value of combining geomorphic and ethnographic data to examine major changes in resource distribution and use.