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"Pottery Analysis."
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Materiality, Techniques and Society in Pottery Production
Daniel Albero Santacreu presents a wide overview of certain aspects of the pottery analysis and summarizes most of the methodological and theoretical information currently applied in archaeology in order to develop wide and deep analysis of ceramic pastes. The book provides an adequate framework for understanding the way pottery production is organised and clarifies the meaning and role of the pottery in archaeological and traditional societies. The goal of this book is to encourage reflection, especially by those researchers who face the analysis of ceramics for the first time, by providing a background for the generation of their own research and to formulate their own questions depending on their concerns and interests. The three-part structure of the book allows readers to move easily from the analysis of the reality and ceramic material culture to the world of the ideas and theories and to develop a dialogue between data and their interpretation. Daniel Albero Santacreu is a Lecturer Assistant in the University of the Balearic Islands, member of the Research Group Arqueo UIB and the Ceramic Petrology Group. He has carried out the analysis of ceramics from several prehistoric societies placed in the Western Mediterranean, as well as the study of handmade pottery from contemporary ethnic groups in Northeast Ghana.
eBook
Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution in a Maya Community
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, and ethnographers.
eBook
A Commentary on Two Scientific Studies of the RUMA (אמור)Jar from Qumran
Two chemical studies of the RUMA jar from Qumran Cave 7 are examined. It is shown that these researches, seemingly at odds, have more in common than not. It is argued that the evidence from both studies point to Jerusalem as the origin of the RUMA jar although one of the studies concludes that the RUMA jar was locally made in Qumran from local clay. The data from both studies are consistent but the interpretations differ.
Journal Article
The Swift Creek Gift
Assesses Woodland Period interactions using technofunctional,
mineralogical, and chemical data derived from Swift Creek
Complicated Stamped sherds A unique dataset for
studying past social interactions comes from Swift Creek
Complicated Stamped pottery that linked sites throughout much of
the Eastern Woodlands but that was primarily distributed over the
lower Southeast. Although connections have been demonstrated,
their significance has remained enigmatic. How and why were
apparently utilitarian vessels, or the wooden tools used to make
them, distributed widely across the landscape?
This book assesses Woodland Period interactions using
technofunctional, mineralogical, and chemical data derived from
Swift Creek Complicated Stamped sherds whose provenience is fully
documented from both mortuary mounds and village middens along
the Atlantic coast. Together, these data demonstrate formal and
functional differences between mortuary and village assemblages
along with the nearly exclusive occurrence of foreign-made
cooking pots in mortuary contexts.
The Swift Creek Gift provides insight into the unique
workings of gift exchanges to transform seemingly mundane
materials like cooking pots into powerful tools of commemoration,
affiliation, and ownership.
eBook
Multiproxy Analysis of Adhered and Absorbed Food Residues Associated with Pottery
The application of multiple lines of evidence is necessary to understand past complex behaviors such as diet and cuisine. This paper advocates for the use of multiple proxies to analyze the compositional content of absorbed and adhered food residues associated with ceramic cooking pots. Foods represented by starches and phytoliths in adhered carbonized residues, carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values in adhered residues, and absorbed lipid residues are identified. Patterns of interior carbonized food remains are used to interpret cooking mode or style, and, when considered in context with identified food types, allow for the reconstruction of ancient cooking practices and cuisine. The collective results provide a more holistic picture of ancient cuisine than any individual proxy because of the unique yet complementary data each provides. The efficacy of this approach is demonstrated with a curated pottery assemblage from the Northern Great Lakes in what is today the state of Michigan. However, the multiproxy analysis described is applicable to pottery collections found anywhere in the world.
Journal Article
Bronze Age Frontiers and Pottery Circulation: Political and Economic Relations at the Northern Fringes of El Argar, Southeast Iberia, ca. 2200–1550 BCE
This paper explores the nature and dynamics of economic and political borders emerging in Later Prehistory between highly centralised and exploitative societies and their much more dispersed and small-scale neighbours. While increasing evidence indicates that Early Bronze Age entities such as El Argar, Únětice or Minoan Crete reached highly complex economic and political forms around 1850–1750 BCE, the processes by which their relations and borders with adjacent, less hierarchical groups were established and maintained still remain poorly understood. To identify such economic and political borders and asymmetric interactions in archaeology, a specific methodological approach was developed which combined extensive field survey, pottery petrography, and spatial modelling of pottery production and circulation areas. Our research focuses on the middle and upper Segura River valley, a largely unexplored borderland between distinct geographic and cultural zones of the Iberian Peninsula. While El Argar expanded over the semi-arid Southeast, adjacent regions—La Mancha and the Spanish Levant—were home to smaller-scale socio-economic entities, known as La Mancha or Las Motillas and the Valencian Bronze Age cultures. At the junction of these three groups, we surveyed 61 settlements across 4800 km
2
and analyzed 1643 pottery sherds, conducting the largest petrographic study of Iberian Bronze Age ceramics. Spatial modeling of the results traced pottery production and circulation, offering insights into economic exchanges, social boundaries and the articulation of borderland spaces. By mapping distinct pottery-making practices, we reveal interactions between El Argar’s core regions and its neighbours, demonstrating the potential of ceramic analysis for understanding Bronze Age border dynamics. Comparable studies in other regions are expected to lead to a better understanding of the role of borders in shaping prehistoric societies and inter-group relations.
Journal Article
Where Worlds Collide: Late Woodland Potting Practice and Social Interaction in Upstate South Carolina
Many anthropologists have now adopted a relational view of the culture concept. Much research has shown that, far from being bounded or self-replicating, cultures emerge through interactions between social Others. These findings are particularly important to research on borderlands and peripheries, where communities routinely encounter wide-ranging social and political diversity. We present ceramic frequencies alongside petrographic analysis from the Late Woodland component at Esseneca (38OC20) to illustrate two main points: (1) pottery types previously understood as culture historical isolates co-occur in parts of Upstate South Carolina, and (2) potters collected clays from two main geologic formations near the site. This research shows that communities in the region traveled freely, crossing cultural boundaries while acquiring potting clays. We suggest that this level of interaction between disparate social groups laid the foundation for some aspects of Mississippianization in the region.
Journal Article