Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: Ceramic Petrography (Other Keyword)
26-50 (89 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the southeastern United States, the genesis of Mississippian societies circa AD 1000 is often referred as Mississippianization, or the process whereby regions were incorporating general Mississippian traits. This process involved the spread of a broad cultural horizon that influenced many aspects of...
Establishing Mississippian Potting Communities at the Wickliffe Mounds Site, Kentucky (2021)
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. Pottery vessels at the Wickliffe Mounds site, a Mississippian village located in Ballard County, Kentucky, can be used as a representative sample to examine the ceramic production techniques and choices used within the Ohio-Mississippi River confluence region. This paper uses both visual and quantitative...
Establishing Provenance and Population Movements of the Vacant Quarter Phenomenon through Ceramic Traditions (2021)
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 Vacant Quarter is a phenomenon that involved the movement of hundreds, possibly thousands, of sedentary communities in mid-continental North America during the Mississippian period (~AD 1450–1550). Many of the details surrounding this phenomenon are still debated. This study narrows in on two subregions of the...
Evidence of Coastal Use by Foragers: Inferences from Pottery Petrography from Two Pleistocene Sites, Tanegashima Island, Japan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tanegashima Island in the southernmost region of Japan has the earliest evidence of a large quantity of ceramic production by late Pleistocene foragers of eastern Eurasia. The island is also part of the southern Kyushu region, where the pottery-bearing occupation is found under well-dated tephra dated to ca. 12,800 cal BP, termed the Incipient Jomon. In...
Evidence of Exchange in Precolumbian Ceramics from Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro, Panama (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Isla Colon, the largest island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago on Panama’s northwest coast, has a unique density of archaeological features in the region. Sitio Drago, the largest site yet found on the island, includes ceremonial and settlement mounds and a diverse and sizable assemblage of subsistence remains and cultural materials....
Examining Origins of Ceramic Production in Lerik, Azerbaijan (Late Iron Age to Late Antique Period): Insights from Ceramic Petrographic Analysis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research examines manufacturing technology and origin of production of ceramics from the necropolis at Piboz Tepe and site at Yoladoy Bin in the Lerik region of Azerbaijan through utilization of ceramic petrography and surface treatment analysis. Data obtained through petrography analysis indicates whether ceramics were locally produced or imported...
Examining Sources of Glazed Ceramics In Mesopotamia in Late Antiquity (2019)
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. Estimation of provenance in fine ceramics is a challenging task. Documenting the trade in glazed Sassanian and Islamic ceramics into southeast Asia and China has driven an interest in identifying the sources of these ceramics. We have defined three hypothetical provenance groups 1) Greater and Lesser Zab catchment (Arbil area),...
Exploring the Interaction of Culture and Technology in the Acoma Culture Province (2018)
The Acoma Culture Province is the geographic expanse of the ancestral homeland of the Pueblo of Acoma documented for adjudication through the Indian Claims Commission and through archaeological research. Pottery made during both the prehistoric and historic periods found within the Acoma Culture Province was made using crushed potsherds as an addition to the pottery clay. The practice of adding crushed potsherds represents a cultural choice for Acoma potters, a choice that has considerable...
From Technological Style to Communities of Practice: Defining Yavi-Chicha Sociotechnical Systems in the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (Border of Bolivia and Argentina) during the Period of Regional Developments (ca. AD 900-1450) (2019)
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. Despite the Yavi-Chicha phenomenon being widely discussed in the Southern Andes, there is a lack of systematic research around the socioeconomic and political implications of production and circulation of the pottery of the Río Grande de San Juan Basin (Chicha Region). From the study of ceramic production and circulation, this...
A Geochemical and Petrographic Analysis of Ceramics from the Estero Island Site in SW Florida (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Estero Island site (8LL4) is located on a shell ridge in what is now Fort Myers Beach in southwestern Florida. A portion of the site, Mound House, consists of a historic house built on top of a Calusa shell mound which was occupied from ca. AD 500–1000. Conservation efforts at Mound House to preserve...
Identifying Potting Traditions from the Nashville Basin through Ceramic Petrography (2023)
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. This paper aims to investigate ceramic manufacturing in the Nashville Basin of Tennessee during the Mississippian period (AD 1000–1500) at the macroscopic and microscopic levels. Our vessel lot and petrographic studies analyze 73 shell-tempered pottery sherds from seven Middle Cumberland archaeological sites. We...
If Ocarinas Could Talk: The Biographies of Ceramic Wind Instruments Used in a Late Classic Maya Funerary Ceremony at Pacbitun, Belize (2018)
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...
Kaolin as the Stuff of Politics among Recuay Communities? Applying Political Geology to Ancient Andean Ceramics (2023)
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...
Landa’s Auto de Fe and the Destruction of the “Idols” of Mani: Petrographic and Chemical Analysis from Mani, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2015, an archaeological rescue program was carried out in Mani, Yucatán, related to improvements in the main square with the aim of designating Mani as a “magical town.” The excavations produced 568 fragments of the “idols” destroyed during the so-called auto de fe organized by Diego de Landa in Mani (1562), punishing the Maya population for...
Local Political Economies at Angamuco, Michoacán: Insights from Ceramic Archaeometry (2018)
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...
Long-Term Use of Local Clays in Potting Traditions during Early Urbanization in the Nochixtlán Valley of the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico, 500–100 BCE (2023)
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...
Memes of Hohokam Pottery: the Spread of Ceramic Traditions from the Middle Gila River, Arizona (2019)
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...
Mineralogy Without Minerals: A Proposed Methodology for Reconstructing the Original Compositions of Highly Altered Ceramic Bodies Using Thin Section Petrography (2018)
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...
Molding Community: Compositional Insights into the Organization of Mississippian Pottery Production on the Central Gulf Coast of Florida, USA (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Technological innovations can have profound social consequences. Alterations to a given potting network change the pacing and tempo of interactions between experts and apprentices, effectively restructuring intergenerational relationships within a community. For this reason, experienced potters may...
A Monte Carlo Approach to Estimating Plausible Ceramic Similarity Values from Fabric Characterizations (2021)
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...
Networks of Embodied Practice: Personhood, the Body, and Potting Skill in the North American Southeast (2021)
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,...
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...
Nubian Ceramic Traditions on Elephantine Island, Egypt (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southern border of Egypt with Sudan (prehistoric Nubia) was always a culturally fluid area. As archaeological studies of the site of Elephantine Island have illustrated, there are features representing Egyptian and Nubian cultural affiliation. The pottery in particular can be of Nubian or Egyptian...
Organic Inclusions in Amazonian Ceramics: A Petrographic Approach (2023)
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,...
Petrographic Analyses of Prehistoric Ceramics from the Sexton Site (8IR01822), Indian River County, Florida (2021)
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...