Craft Production (Other Keyword)
176-200 (313 Records)
Maya potters in the towns of Muna, Mama, and Ticul have historically used a calcite crystal to temper cooking pots due to its perceived role in mitigating the negative effects of thermal shock. When a clay cooking pot begins to be used it is exposed to extreme temperature variations which lead it to experience catastrophic failure are a higher rate than many ceramic vessels used for other activities. In this paper we discuss the results of experimental archaeology using calcite crystals in...
Maya Monument Production: Techne and the Birth of Meaning (2017)
Analyses of sculptural practices of the Ancient Maya have centered on the final stages of production, namely the identities of sculptors, the locations of production, and the techne of sculptural practice. While the contributions of these analyses cannot be contested, there remains a poorly resolved understanding of when in the process of sculpture limestone gains its cultural significance. This paper presents data from recent excavations at a quarry workshop at Xultun where a stela still...
The Mayan Style Lapidary Objects in Mesoamerica Outside the Maya Region: Provenance, Manufacture, Distribution, and Symbolism (2018)
Across Mesoamerica and outside the Maya Region, archaeologists have found different greenstone lapidary objects with glossy appearance and particular iconography and aesthetics that were considered as jadeite and crafted by the Maya. Unfortunately, their detailed analysis to confirm these assumptions is scarce. In this paper, we will show the study of Mayan style lapidary items from different sites, like Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, Teteles, Tula, Tamtoc, and Tenochtitlan. We employed Micro-Raman...
Metal production on Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Fortified Hilltops in the South Caucasus, c. 1500-600 BC (2016)
One of the challenges facing the study of technological change and craft production during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Near East is a lack of information about the spatial and social contexts in which metal production occurred. A new program of survey and excavation aims to explore these issues in an ore-rich transitional zone between lowland and highland areas of the South Caucasus. Fortified hilltop settlements dot lowland valleys as they narrow and rise towards the...
Mica in Xalla: A Glittering Archaeological Indicator of Power and Specialized Production (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Palace of Xalla in Teotihuacan: A Possible Seat of Power in the Ancient Metropolis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mica, a shiny silicate mineral with a layered structure, was highly valued by the Teotihuacan people. Mica has unique physical properties, but we propose that the most striking one was of an optical nature, owing to the fact that it is a multicolored, specular material. The Teotihuacan elite groups...
Micro-CT Scanning with 3D Image Analysis of Pore Systems in Sherds as a Tool to Understand Performance Characteristics of Archaeological Ceramics (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Characterizing a ceramic pore system reveals information about use properties and functionality. Pores making up the system include some that are isolated and others with connections to other pores, some connected to the ceramic surface and others interior-only, and variation exists in pore size and shape and connection size and directness. The...
A Microscopic Analysis of Inclusion Size in Middle Horizon 1 Ceramics from Huari (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Huari, the capital of an Andean conquest state during the Middle Horizon, contains ceramics of a multitude of local and foreign styles. While these styles have generally been defined by their outer appearances, it is still unclear whether they can also be distinguished according to their pastes. A...
Microscopic and Spectrometric Techniques Applied to Identify Luxury Materials in a Fifteenth-Century Aztec Shield (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the collections of the world, only six aztec feathered objects exist: three shields and a headdress in Europe, and two shields in Mexico. Mexico’s National Museum of History conserves one shield, made of mammal hide,...
Middle Preclassic Ceramic Distribution in Western Belize: A Comparative Study from Early Xunantunich (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Preclassic Landscape in the Mopan Valley, Belize" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The value of ceramic sherds and vessels to the archaeologist extends far beyond the chronology of a site. Ceramic production and distribution data, for example, reveal information about ancient lifeways, ideologies, and movement across a landscape, ultimately telling us more about the people behind the pottery. In this paper, I will...
Middle Preclassic Chipped Stone Caches at Ceibal and Holtun, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including obsidian prismatic-blade cores. Like...
The Mind of an Artisan in Early China: A Museum Collection Study (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study aims to investigate the different ways artisans in early China (up to the 3rd century) learned their crafts, in order to better understand how certain types of artifacts such as pottery and bronze were made, and how new styles and designs emerged. In early China, craftsmanship was usually inherited through...
Mineralogical and Chemical Properties of Preclassic Maya Ceramics from Colha, Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the question of whether or not Preclassic Maya exploited volcanogenic ceramic raw materials, which have refractory properties such as thermal conductivity, resistance to thermal shock, abrasion, chemical weathering, and thermal decomposition. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-rays, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence, and...
Mining, Extractive Metallurgy and Imperialism in the Inka Empire (2018)
The Inka empire directed significant resources and labor towards the extraction of metals from the provinces. Using the examples of Porco (silver), Viña del Cerro (copper) and the Tarapacá Valley (copper and silver), this poster explores Inka strategies for obtaining metallurgical wealth. These case studies show that, as suggested by ethnohistoric sources, large-scale silver extraction was directly overseen by the state. In contrast to models of more indirect state involvement typically...
Mix, Mold, Fire! An Exploration of the Chaine Operatoire through the Eyes of an Apprentice Potter (2018)
Pottery manufacturing in Early Bronze Age (EBA) Anatolia witnessed a host of technical innovations that transformed what had been a small-scale domestic activity into a specialist craft. At the proto-urban village of Seyitömer Höyük, dedicated pottery workshops appeared in the EBIII period (ca. 2250-2200 BCE), along with a suite of technical innovations, such as pottery molds, clay mixing pits, and clusters of pottery kilns. These advances allowed potters to manufacture more vessels with less...
Modern versus Prehistoric Hafting Mediums: Are They Comparable? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the performance of three different projectile point hafting mediums in order, to determine whether thermoplastic adhesive is an applicable medium to use in archaeological experiments concerning projectile point ballistic experiments. The study examines ninety, triangular projectiles (thirty points hafted with each of the three mediums): one...
Moundville's Economy (1991)
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A Moving Taskscape in the Late Bronze Age Argolid, Greece (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In past pre-industrial societies featuring large-scale building projects, extensive manual labour was invested during the entire chaîne opératoire of construction. This report focuses instead on the cost of multiple labour activities during the 13th century BCE in the Aegean Late Bronze Age. It aims to move “beyond the calculation of average and peak...
Multifunctional Bone Tool Usage at the Prehispanic Site of Jecosh (Ancash, Peru) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a preliminary analysis of the worked bone assemblage from the prehispanic settlement of Jecosh in the Callejón de Huaylas valley of Ancash, Peru. Inhabitants lived at this hilltop site for nearly two millennia, from the post-Chavín period through the time of Inka conquest of the region (~100BCE-1532CE) with noticeable settlement intensification...
Nested-Context Perspective of Craft Production: Middle Sicán Metallurgy (2017)
Different facets and stages of craft production commonly occur in different spatial loci regardless of differences in medium, technology, intensity and/or scale. Locational differences may be relatively minor with different facets or production stages being practiced concurrently, or masters and apprentices occupying different areas of a given room or workshop. While sheet metal preparation and alloying both require constant heat sources, the former requires a clean area protected from winds and...
Networks of Power: Political Relations in the Late Postclassic Naco Valley, Honduras (2011)
Little is known about how Late Postclassic populations in southeast Mesoamerica organized their political relations. Networks of Power fills gaps in the knowledge of this little-studied area, reconstructing the course of political history in the Naco Valley from the fourteenth through early sixteenth centuries. Describing the material and behavioral patterns pertaining to the Late Postclassic period using components of three settlements in the Naco Valley of northwestern Honduras, the book...
New Evidence of Inca Ceramic Production and Exchange in the Cuzco Heartland (2018)
INAA analyses of ethnographic and archaeological ceramics from the Cuzco heartland yield new insights into the patterns of production and distribution of Inca pottery in the Cuzco heartland. Multiple centers of production existed in this region and significant levels of exchange in imperial pottery occurred between the Sacred Valley and the Cusco Basin. Possible centers of production are suggested on the basis of the new results.
New Insights into Bronze Age Ceramic Production in Northwestern China: Petrographic Analysis of Qijia and Shajing Materials from the Andersson Collections (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The late Neolithic to late Bronze Age periods (ca. 2300–400 BCE) in what is now northwestern China was a time of significant technological and social change. Based on limited excavation and survey, it has been suggested that major changes took place in subsistence technologies, including a potential shift from sedentary farming to mobile herding, as...
A Nineteenth-Century Furnace in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tonalá and Tlaquepaque are the main centers of traditional glassblowing in Mexico today. While there are records of one glass furnace in the sixteenth century in Jalisco, the industry did not take root in the area until the early nineteenth century. The analysis of archaeological glass from colonial Mexico City shows that glassmakers followed the tradition...
Not All Distance Is Kilometric… Obsidian Procurement and Exchange at Salinas de los Nueve Cerros and Cancuen (2018)
During the Classic period most lowlands cities imported obsidian from the El Chayal source, the other two major high quality outcrops (SMJ and Ixtepeque), being in the minority by comparison. Despite the fact that much has yet to be understood about the way this material was transported from the Highlands to the Lowlands, the recent discoveries at Cancuen of a single cache containing hundreds of complete prismatic cores demonstrated that this site played a major role in the production and export...
Not Only of Obsidian: The Chert Assemblage in Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Surface survey and excavations of Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan at the site of Tepeticpac recovered various lithic artifacts in addition to the chipped obsidian assemblage. Although the chipped non-obsidian artifacts were far fewer than obsidian artifacts, they were still found throughout the site in both surface domestic and excavated public...