Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: Ceramic Petrography (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kong Cheong. Linda Howie. Terry Powis.

The Classic Maya crafted a wide variety of music instruments from clay and other materials. Numerous depictions of musicians on vase paintings and murals attest to the important role of music in ceremonial occasions. Music instruments were also interred with the deceased during funerary ceremonies; although their comparative rarity in burials suggests that their inclusion was not a common practice. At the site of Pacbitun, music instruments have been recovered from multiple Classic period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Elizabeth Grávalos.

This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent scholarship argues that the knowledge and use of earthly materials is a power-laden field that is relationally distributed across everyday activities. This paper draws on these theoretical discussions in “political geology” to grapple with three interpretations for prehispanic Recuay kaolin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Cohen. Michael Galaty.

A key goal in the study of ancient artifacts is determining their provenance. Such information can provide insight into the production and consumption of artifacts, but may also inform discussions about local political economies. Our study uses qualitative optical petrography and geochemical analysis (NAA) to evaluate the tempers and paste recipes in ceramic fragments and raw clays from Angamuco, located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán. Angamuco was occupied before and throughout the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karleen Ronsairo.

This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mixteca Alta Ceramic Study (MACS) in the Nochixtlán Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, aims to understand how early urbanization in the valley impacted potters’ crafting techniques over time and space. Early urbanization in the valley spanned the Yucuita and Early Ramos ceramic phases (500–100 BCE) of the Middle to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Lack. Mary Ownby.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The idea of memes, as coined by Dawkins, originally referred to an element of a culture or behavior that is passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means. It was used to examine how cultural phenomenon replicate, mutate, survive, or become extinct. This has clear applications to ceramic traditions where the cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Howie. Jillian Jordan. Heather McKillop.

The rock and mineral fragments present in archaeological pottery, whether naturally occurring in the clay component or intentionally added as a temper, often serve as the primary geologic basis for provenance ascription in petrographic analysis. In certain contexts, however, the original compositional characteristics of pottery have been highly altered through technological or postdepositional processes. In these situations, accurate characterization and sourcing of original raw material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Torvinen. Matthew A. Peeples.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic characterization studies often depend on estimates of similarities and differences in assemblages drawn from relatively small samples to address questions regarding a range of social patterns and processes. In most cases, such characterizations do not consider uncertainty due to sampling error nor do they...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Trevor Duke. Neill J. Wallis. Ann S. Cordell.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists over the last two decades have become increasingly interested in the relationship between personhood and the human body. Bodily engagement with the material world can create and reproduce different kinds of social understandings, and is a means by which persons make subjectivity durable,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Womack. Anke Hein. Ole Stilborg.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ximena Villagran. Marcony Alves. Thiago Kater. Kelly Brandão. Francisco Pugliese.

This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Organic inclusions, such as freshwater spicules (cauixi) and tree bark ash (caraipé) are one of the most diagnostic elements of pottery production in the Amazon basin. At the Monte Castelo shell mound (southwestern Amazonia), Bacabal pottery represents the widespread use of sponge spicules in the ceramic paste,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Freund. Silvia Amicone. Beatrice Boese. J.M. Adovasio. Allen Quinn.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Sexton Site (8IR01822) is situated on a slightly elevated limestone hammock in Indian River County, Florida. Extensive geophysical prospection, shovel probing, and subsequent block excavations in 2019 revealed the presence of a midden with a possibly contiguous seasonal village or hamlet of probable Woodland age. Nine hundred ninety-two ceramic sherds were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey DeMario.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A petrographic analysis was conducted on sherd samples from the small prehistoric Maya site of Hun Tun, located in the hinterlands of the larger elite polity, La Milpa, in Northwestern Belize. Hun Tun contains a chultun, an archaeological feature in the ground which was filled with a clay which was lacking in inclusions. Dr. Robyn Dodge, the archaeologist who...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Drake Rosenstein. Konstantina-Eleni Michelaki.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Here we present the first results of petrographic analysis on ceramic sherds from Umbro Greek archaeological site, a Classical period farmhouse in Southern Calabria, Italy, dating from the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The site is located on the Umbro plateau, halfway between the Ionian Sea and the Aspromonte Massif, an area extensively researched by the Bova...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Chastain.

This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although ceramic analysis is sure to be a critical line of evidence for understanding the development of complex society in the Chengdu Plain (Sichuan province, China), only a small number of technical studies have been carried out on pottery from the region. Ceramic sherds collected by the Chengdu Plain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Lawrence. Scott Fitzpatrick. Christina Giovas.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric Amerindians in the Eastern Caribbean often used local materials in the manufacturing of ceramics, and in some cases, transported these as they migrated. Given the ubiquity of ceramics in the Caribbean, they are useful in discerning past movements, and spheres of interaction. However, studies of this nature are scarce...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thiago Kater. Silvana Zuse. Fernando Ozorio de Almeida. Richard Burger. Eduardo Góes Neves.

This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several researchers have been showing that the southwestern Amazon is a center of cultural innovation and diversity in lowlands South America. Archaeological studies carried out in the last decades have also revealed that the region has ancient centers of ceramic production. At the upper Madeira River, southwest Amazonia,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Killick. Edwin Wilmsen.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 45 years, Wilmsen, James Denbow, and others have recovered ceramics from nearly thirty excavated sites, in the northern half of Botswana. Together with Phenyo Thebe and Ann Griffiths, Wilmsen has also sampled clays and sands throughout the region, has obtained samples of raw materials, and prepared pastes and pots...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Hirshman.

Archaeologically known ceramic pastes from the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico, involved long-lived paste recipes that have been identified both visually and via neutron activation. This paper focuses upon Late Postclassic Tarascan state-period ceramics (AD 1350-1525) and contextualizes new petrographic data within the regional geology and prior research in order to assess aspects of the longevity and complexity in potter’s paste choices within the basin.

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Lawrence. Cathy Costin. Kathleen Marsaglia. Michael Love. Hector Neff.

The Middle Preclassic (900-600 BCE) was a critical time of political and social centralization in the Guatemalan lowlands. Of particular interest is La Blanca, one of the first polities to rise and show signs of regional influence and potential urbanization. To reconstruct everyday life I am using excavated ceramic refuse to observe dynamics surrounding three households. This, in turn, elucidates elements of La Blanca’s political economy associated with the manufacturing and production of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Trevor Duke. Neill J. Wallis. Ann S. Cordell.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Extant models of craft specialization often assume that craft production served to instantiate or reify existing social relationships. By this line of reasoning, pots must have played only a passive role at communal gatherings and mortuary rituals. If pots were merely the accoutrements of specialists, the symbols of lineages, or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Bartusewich.

On the island of Cyprus, the first millennium BCE was a period of change in politics and culture brought about by new people, new governance, and new technology. This paper attempts to analyze these changes using one site. Idalion is located in the east-central part of the island. The polity went through many changes from its founding, c. 1200 BCE, through the first millennium BCE and I have begun to investigate some through petrographic analysis of pottery. Pottery production can represent...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Uribe. Camila Riera-Soto. Petrus le Roux.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Iluga Túmulos site (900 BC–AD 1600) is an archaeological area of great significance, with abandoned agricultural and public structures partially buried by aridization processes. It represents a record of multiple cultural occupations, which started in the Early Formative and continued until Inca and Spanish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Cohen.

This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Documentation of the chaîne opératoire allows us to investigate the manufacturing steps that transform raw materials into finished products. Study of these steps can facilitate discussions about the intentions of ancient potters and potter communities of practice. In western Mesoamerica during the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scarlett Chiu. Yu-Yin Su. David Killick. Christophe Sand.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we will illustrate the number of possible pottery-making locations that we have identified so far from the Lapita pottery assemblage excavated at Kurin site, Mare Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. We first examined the non-plastic inclusions to determine whether minerals and rock fragments identified through a petrographic microscope may...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Stoner.

This is an abstract from the "Cross-Cultural Petrographic Studies of Ceramic Traditions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramics sourcing studies in the Basin of Mexico suffer from the interior drainage problem. Sediment erodes from the mountains and mixes as it drains inward toward the lake at the center. Material composition, and the ceramics made from them, grades subtly over space as a result, making provenance analysis difficult. In a prior...