Anthropology

In the literature dealing with the development of ceramic specialization, paste uniformity has been suggested as a surrogate index of product standardization and the result of a more intensive level of specialization. More recently, the amount of paste variability has been seen as an indicator of different types of production organization. Ethnoarchaeological data from Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala suggest that a variety of environmental, technological, and social factors influence paste variability. These factors are important in all production contexts and complicate inferences drawn about production organization in antiquity. As a consequence, social and economic inferences derived from ancient ceramic pastes need to be understood in relation to numerous other factors such as natural variability of the ceramic raw materials, their procurement, and their use in paste preparation. Furthermore, changes in resource use and paste preparation over time can obscure intracommunity and other fine-scale patterns. As a consequence, it is argued that little, if anything, can be learned about the organization of production below the level of the local production community. Rather, the primary usefulness of paste compositional analyses lies in the identification, in geographic and geological spaces (“community signature units”), of source communities that exploit raw materials within a limited range of probably no more than 3 to 4 km. Paste analyses thus provide important information about the organization of ceramic distribution, revealing the emergence and demise of source communities and the movement of their ceramic products.

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment used on pottery, sculpture, and murals from the Preclassic to the Colonial period. Until the ate 1960s, its composition was unknown, but chemists working in Spain, Belgium, Mexico, and the United States identified Maya Blue as a combination of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called attapulgite). A source of palygorskite in the Maya area was unknown for years; then ethnoarchaeological research in the mid-1960s demonstrated that the contemporary Maya recognized the unique physical properties of palygorskite and used it as an additive for pottery temper and for curing certain types of illnesses. Because of its importance in Maya Blue, pre-Hispanic sources of the mineral were then suggested based on ethnoarchaeological data. One of these sources was the cenote in the town of Sacalum, Yucatan. This paper briefly reviews the history of the Maya Blue research from an anthropological perspective and presents evidence of a second possible pre-Hispanic mining site for palygorskite at Yo’ Sah Kab near Ticul, Yucatan. Archaeological and technological approaches have demonstrated the use, distribution, composition, and characteristics of Maya Blue, but ethnoarchaeology has related it to Maya language and culture and to possible pre-Hispanic sources of one of its constituents, palygorskite.

This item consists of two more responses to my 'Ceramic Ecology of Ayacucho' article (above) in a subsequent issue of Current Anthropology. My response was seminal in writing  my book 'Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process' because of the lack of understanding of the ecological factors that influenced ceramic production that was demonstrated in the critiques to my original article. (One critic called my original article 'dangerous'  because I challenged the role of culture as being an exclusive explanation of location and frequency of ceramic production.)

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.)

Contemporary pottery and raw materials (N = 170) from three workshops in Ticul, Yucatan, were analyzed by neutron activation to test the hypothesis that individual workshops that used their own clay sources could be identified by their pottery. Although the data failed to confirm the hypothesis, the results reinforced previous conclusions about the relationship of local communities of potters to the chemical patterning of pottery made in these communities.

This paper illustrates how different sections of pots are joined by potters in Mexico, Guatemala and among the ancient Incas. Potters in Ticul, Yucatan and Mexico join portions of vessels using moulding and large coils that are drawn up and thinned with a gourd scraper. Potters in the northern Valley of Guatemala also use large thick coils, but join them to mould-made bases. In both locations, potters make very thick joints by a variety of techniques and then thin them with a gourd scraper. Among the ancient Incas, however, potters appeared to use smaller coils. For the base of vessels they used clay discs (for large arybalus) and clay cylinders (cooking pots) to which slabs of clay and parts of the vessel were attached. Both the edges of the coils and the edges of the discs were scored using various patterns to make the clay stick across the joints.

This paper reports some refinements in the Threshold Model for Ceramic Resources based on distances to ceramic resources from ethnographic pottery making communities (Arnold 1985). The refinements make the thresholds more objective than they were in the previous model and enable it more precise application for identifying local vs. non-local ceramic production in the past.

The abundant ethnohistorical information about the Inca empire provides an opportunity to compare these data with the archaeology of the Inca period in order to elucidate the realities of Inca state formation and its imperialistic expansion. One of the mechanisms of this expansion was the utilization of colonists (mitimaes) who were removed from more secure areas of the empire and placed in newly conquered territories. One group of these exiles came from the village of Acos southeast of the Inca capital of Cuzco and held crucial administrative posts in the Inca empire as overseers of the bridges. According to the chronicles, during the reign of Pachacuti, the ninth Inca, the Acos Indians were relocated 250 km to the northwest of the village of Acos in an area near the modern city of Ayacucho. Because the Acos Indians were "Incas of Privilege" and part of the administrative structure of the empire, examining the ethnohistoric and archaeological data about this group provides some insight into how it was incorporated into the early Inca state before its rapid expansion. Comparison of ethnohistoric data and an archaeological reconnaissance around the village of Acos suggest that the Acos Indians were absorbed into the Inca state through conquest.

This article is a report of a research trip to Yucatan to find, and document sources of palygorskite used in the production of the ancient pigment, Maya Blue. The article also documents a visit to the palygorskite mine in the cenote at Sacalum, Yucatan. The mine was discovered by Arnold in the 1960s, and reported with Bohor in 1975 (Arnold and Bohor 1975 {above). No significant changes in the mine's extent were found since a visit there in 1968.

Although the chemical analyses of pottery (utilizing such techniques such as INAA) are commonly believed to reveal the provenance of pottery, the data from such analyses are really far removed from the behavior of  potters and the society in which they live. Those who use these analyses employ terms such as 'source', 'reference group' and 'fingerprint', but these terms are geological ('source') and statistical ('reference group') and have no inherent link with the behavior of potters ('fingerprint' of what socially?). When a variety of factors that contribute to compositional variability of pottery are considered, one wonders what such chemical analyses actually mean in terms of the behavior of the potters and the society from which they come. This paper provides three linking concepts derived from comparative ethnography that link INAA analyses of pottery to the behavior of potters that provide a middle range theory for the interpretation of the chemical analyses of pottery. These concept have emerged from the INAA of ethnographic pottery and raw materials (N = 845) collected and analyzed over a period of 32 years from seven different communities in two distinct geological areas in Latin America.

This paper is a preliminary statement of patterns of learning, residence and houselot inheritance among potters in Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico.

A more complete description of these patterns over a period of more than three decades can be found in the books below:

2008 Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution in a Maya Community. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
http://www.upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1905-social-change-and-the-evolution-of-ceramic-production-and-distribution-in-a-maya-community

In Chapter 2 this book, these patterns are traced quantitatively over a period of 32 years (between 1965 and 1992).

2015 The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
http://www.upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/2022-the-evolution-of-ceramic-production-organization-in-a-maya-community

Most of this book expands the quantitative date in the book above into a narrative of family and production unit histories from 1965 to 2008.

In both books, the data shows that pottery making is largely learned in households created and formed by house lot inheritance and marriage, and these processes provide a pool from which some in the household learns the craft, and passes it on to the next generation.