Petrography (Other Keyword)
1-25 (40 Records)
The site of Huaca Colorada, in the Jequetepeque Valley, on the North Coast of Peru, is an ideal location to examine cultural interchange and technological innovation from both a production and consumption perspective due to its occupation during the Middle Horizon (AD 600 – 1000). This period is marked by sustained cultural interaction throughout the Peruvian Andes. Evidence for this interchange at Huaca Colorada is found in the mixing of a number of different ceramic traditions within...
Beyond Ceramic Provenience: Interdisciplinary Research into Social Practices at LIRAC (2017)
Dr. Kostalena Michelaki founded the laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research of Archaeological Ceramics (LIRAC) in 2006, thanks to funding by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. She established this facility to examine the relationships between technology, society and the environment, through the archaeometric analysis of technological choices made by people in the production and use of ceramics. Scholars working in LIRAC, and in associated McMaster research centres such as the Brockhouse...
Ceramic petrography, historical linguistics and the Bantu expansion: tracking the arrival of the first pottery-using peoples in northern Botswana (2015)
It may seem counterintuitive that colonists travelling substantial distances on foot into new territory should have carried ceramic vessels with them, but in some cases the evidence from ceramic petrography shows that they did. This case study examines the movements of the first pottery-using migrants into northern Botswana between the first and the fourth centuries CE. Southern Africa was the terminus of the long expansion of Bantu languages from their region of origin in present eastern...
Ceramic Technologies and Technologies of Remembrance - an Iroquoian Case Study (2017)
The patterned deposition of certain objects, often in association with materials or structures that are seen to have symbolic associations, is an act of memorialization seen in many Neolithic and broadly shamanic societies throughout the world. This paper uses petrographic and contextual data to explore how objects manufactured with certain material qualities may have served as symbolic referents to memories related to Ontario Iroquoian ritual and social practices, both at the object level, and...
Characterizing Eighteenth Century Technological Changes in Pawnee Pottery (2015)
The pottery produced by the Pawnee of the central Great Plains of North America underwent extensive modification in the eighteenth century. Although twentieth-century archaeologists described the "early" and "late" materials, they did not adequately characterize how Pawnee potters modified their craft in terms of vessel morphology or technological practice, nor did they consider pottery function. Thus, we have no satisfactory account of this change. Situated in the context of technological...
Classifying Classic Period Ceramics from Azcapotzalco: A Comparison of INAA and Petrography (2016)
This pilot project used petrographic analysis to examine fifteen Classic Period sherds from the site of Azcapotzalco, Distrito Federal, Mexico. These sherds had already undergone instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), which separated the sherds into two chemical groups--Azcapotzalco-B and Tenochtitlan--and left one-third of the sherds unassigned. This project aimed to compare the INAA results with results obtained through the visual analysis of the microstructure of the sherds and...
A Comparative Study on Ceramic Production from Central Plain China and South China in Early Shang Dynasty (2017)
The site of Panlongcheng is located 450 kilometers south of Zhengzhou in present-day Hubei province serves as the join point between the Central Plain Culture and the Lower and the southern regions of Yangtze River. Unlike almost all of more than twenty bronzes vessel shapes are represented in the Panlongcheng finds, there are three different ceramic types discovered at Panlongcheng: Typical Central Plain style(Erligang style), local style and numerous stoneware/hardware(some glazed). In pursuit...
Crafting Choices: Neolithic – Early Helladic II Ceramic Production and Distribution, Midea, Mainland Greece (2015)
Forming part of a broader programme of macroscopic, petrographic, SEM, and NAA analysis of ceramics from Mainland Greece, this paper focuses on the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze II sequence at the site of Midea in the Argolid. Through investigating the technological variability present at Midea, our results suggest significant differences, and continuity, in technological choices over time. Most notable is the decline of grog temper between the Final Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods....
Examining variability and provenance through ceramic petrography at Chavín de Huántar (2015)
The site of Chavín de Huántar, in the Peruvian Andes, exhibits an extraordinary amount of variability and complexity. In order to better understand this diversity, ceramic fragments from different contexts within the site were sampled, specifically for paste analysis. An initial macroscopic analysis suggested higher variability in pastes within the ceremonial center than within the residential area across the river. It also showed that the fragments from different contexts within the ceremonial...
Finding a Middle Ground: Paste Analysis by way of a USB Microscope in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia (2016)
Ceramic pastes in the Titicaca Basin reflect shifting pottery production practices across space and time. Yet paste groups are not very standardized, making it difficult to compare ceramic pastes between sites, explore regional pottery production, social interactions, economy, and broader ecological and social landscapes of the past. This poster presents results from ongoing research employing a Dino-lite digital USB microscope in paste analysis and its value compared to petrographic analysis....
From Sea to Shining Sea: The Influence of Bill Dickinson’s Pacific Island Ceramic Petrography on Caribbean Research (2015)
Bill Dickinson’s research in the Pacific is widely known and considered to be one of the most exemplary cases of transdisciplinary research between archaeologists and the geosciences. The collaborative effort cultivated between Dickinson and the archaeological community over the last 50 years has led to new ways of understanding how and when peoples colonized islands, and the exchange systems that developed through time, among other important issues. One of the most significant outcomes of these...
Function-based Processing Decisions in the Middle Balsas Region of Guerrero, Mexico (2015)
Petrography has long been recognized as a powerful way to understand pottery provenience and production decisions. Despite this, few studies focus on production decisions made by potters working in a single community, especially potters who practice household-level production. In this paper, I investigate decisions made by potters at the site of La Queseria, Guerrero, Mexico during the Classic Period (AD 200-900). Petrographic analysis of their vessels suggests that two major clay sources were...
In the Land of Lava: Petrographic and Chemical Analysis of Pottery from El Malpais National Monument (2015)
Pottery found at four sites located in the eastern half of El Malpais National Monument offers significant clues into the importance of this area for the southern Chaco cultural extension. Further, the movement of pottery within the area is also significant as is information on local or non-local production. In order to begin to understand these issues, chemical and petrographic analysis was carried out on pottery mostly from the great house site of Las Ventanas. The Cibola White Ware, Socorro...
Juntando La Junta: Bringing Together Ceramics Research in the La Junta Region of West Texas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The La Junta de los Ríos (or La Junta) region of West Texas and Northeast Chihuahua is composed of villages scattered around the confluence of the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande. Based on limited investigations, La Junta village sites (AD 1200-1684) appear to be archeologically similar to, yet distinct from, adjacent Mogollon groups. While the region has been...
Las haches polies de la Corse: données archéologiques appliquées à l'expérimentation (2011)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
Micro analyses of 17th Century adobe bricks from the "new" church at Pecos, New Mexico. (2015)
The clash of Pueblo farmers and Spanish missionaries in central New Mexico marks the transition from prehistoric maize farming to the modern era along the Rio Grande River. The interaction between Native Americans and Spanish was not totally either peaceful or confrontational. The first church, built in the 1620s, was later burned during the Pueblo Revolt when Spanish were forced to leave, then rebuilt when relations improved. Four bricks from the new church (Mission de Nuestra Senora de los...
Microfossils and Micro-XRF: sourcing raw materials for Iron Age to Romano-British pottery production at Burrough Hill hillfort, UK (2015)
Burrough Hill hillfort, east Leicestershire, United Kingdom, is an example of an Iron Age settlement of the Corieltauvi people who occupied the East Midlands in the millennium prior to the Roman occupation of Britain in AD 43. The hillfort is set in a sedimentary landscape with few distinctive rock types. Objectives of the current study are to determine signatures of the local sedimentary deposits, building materials and pottery using ceramic petrography, micropalaeontology, WDXRF and micro-XRF....
Mortar Analysis for Archaeological Stratigraphy: The Stadt Huys Block and Seven Hanover Square Collections, New York, NY (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Advancements in materials analysis offer new opportunities for studying architectural materials in archaeological collections. This paper will demonstrate the diagnostic capabilities of mortars recovered from the Stadt Huys Block and Seven Hanover Square excavations in Lower Manhattan in...
Non-ferrous casting molds and technical logic: What can the technical differences between the Bronze Age and Iron Age molds tell us about the technological development of metalworking? (2015)
Studies of technological changes in non-ferrous casting during the shift between the Bronze and the Iron Age in Europe have particularly looked at changes of crucible manufacture or the use of different alloys, while technology of the casting mold has not been studied to the same extent. Mainly three types of molds were used during the prehistoric period – single piece, two-piece, and investment. The first two types were made in clay, stone and occasionally metal, while investment molds were...
Not so Exotic After All?: Results from A Characterization of "Puebloan" and "Micaceous" Ceramics from Dismal River Aspect Sites (2015)
Small numbers of supposedly "Southwestern" sherds appear at many sites on the Great Plains. Some Dismal River aspect (AD 1650-1725) people living on the Central and High Plains had extensive contact with people in northern New Mexico and may have lived with Puebloan migrants in the late 1600s. Exotic ceramics appear at several Dismal River sites including red slipped wares and micaceous sherds. Using a combination of NAA and petrography, we characterized a sample of these sherds from several...
Observations Concerning Ash-Tempered Pottery from the Archaeological Site of Los Soldados (2015)
The use of volcanic ash as temper in Olmec pottery is generally known, unfortunately its temporal and spatial distribution at the site and regional levels remains poorly understood in the Gulf lowland regions. This paper presents the results of conventional microscopy and thin section petrographic analysis identifying the distribution of ash temper within the Los Soldados' pottery assemblage. This is done with an attempt to illustrate the relationship of ash temper in proportion to other paste...
Petrographic analysis of decorated ceramics from La Quemada, Zacatecas, Mexico (2016)
The hilltop center of La Quemada in the Malpaso Valley of Zacatecas, Mexico, was the focal point of one of several polities that developed along the northern frontier of Mesoamerica during the Epiclassic period (A.D. 500-900). Northern frontier polities are known to have interacted due to their shared material culture (i.e., patio-banquette complexes, colonnaded halls, and the exchange of obsidian and shell products), but the mechanism(s) of this interaction are not fully understood. Ceramic...
A Petrographic Analysis of Jemez Black-on-white Pottery from Five Classic Period Sites in the Jemez Province, New Mexico (c. 1350-1700 AD) (2016)
Unlike many other ceramic types in the American Southwest, Jemez Black-on-white is commonly regarded as a distinctive locally-made type that remained both stylistically and compositionally unchanged for three centuries. This generally accepted status of Jemez Black-on-white, however, has meant that until recently, little additional work has been done to better understand its origins and development. Here, I present the results of a petrographic analysis of 15 Jemez Black-on-white sherds taken...
Petrography and Provenance of Pottery Sherds from Islands in the Southern Lesser Antilles, Caribbean (2016)
Native Amerindian groups who inhabited the southern Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean likely used local materials for temper in the manufacturing of pottery, but may have transported pottery once it was produced. To identify potential sources of temper and possible movement of these resources and/or pottery, we conducted petrographic analysis of Pre-Columbian ceramics found on various islands, including Barbados, Mustique, Carriacou, and Union. Each island exhibits distinct geology with sand...
Petrography As a Means of Tracing Stone Tools from Florida (1973)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.