Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: INAA (Other Keyword)
26-49 (49 Records)
It is unlikely that we will see a research effort of the scope and duration of the Homol’ovi Research Program project replicated in the Southwest. It is the successful execution of this work by Chuck Adams and Rich Lange, unfolding over more than three decades, that we will attempt to contextualize from the vantage point of that other university in Arizona, ASU. We begin by reviewing the intellectual context of Southwestern research preceding the Homol’ovi project, in particular how the...
Incipient Pottery Practices and Divergent Complexities in the Late Archaic Southeast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pottery technology has long played a central role in evolutionary narratives of early complex societies, most often through its perceived link to other cultural benchmarks such as sedentism, farming, and regionalization. Archaeological research over the past few decades, however, has largely discredited simplistic and monolithic accounts...
Intra-valley Exchange before the Rise of Monte Albán – New Data from Trace-element Analyses of Rosario Phase Ceramics (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Rosario phase (ca. 700-500 BCE) in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico represents the period immediately preceding the rise of Monte Abán and the earliest stages of Zapotec state formation. Relatively little is known about intra-valley interactions during this time, beyond interpretations based on settlement pattern analyses. As part of our on-going INAA program...
Local and Imported Ceramics from a Feasting Assemblage at Etlatongo: Preliminary INAA Results (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) conducted on a late Middle Formative ceramic sample recently excavated at Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, demonstrates both local ceramic production and regional interaction with the Valley of Oaxaca. A total of 78 vessel fragments dating to the Yucuita phase (500-300 BCE) were recovered from...
Mahan Political Economy: Evidence from Ceramic Geochemistry (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Evidence, Methods, Theories, and Challenges to Understanding Prehistoric Economies in Korea" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Emerging data from the Mahan cultures of South Korea are fundamentally changing our understanding of this complex society and its relationship with Korea's early states. Using INAA data on ceramic geochemistry, patterns of production traditions and trade relationships reveal a political...
The Mesoamerican Ceramic Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) Database at MURR: History, Current Status, and Future Directions (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the nearly 35 years since the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) was founded, the Mesoamerican Ceramic NAA database has grown to almost 30,000 entries spanning Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and beyond. This paper presents the history of how the database came together,...
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.
Overlapping and Shifting Networks: Comales, Spouses and Other Social/Material Interactions between/within Highlands and Coast in Colonial Guatemala (2018)
Ceramic assemblages of Postclassic and Colonial Maya sites in highland and coastal Guatemala are dominated by comales: griddle-like cooking vessels indicative of a maize tortilla diet. Given that some archaeologists have interpreted the appearance of the nixtamal/tortilla/comal complex in Guatemala as evidence of the "Mexicanization" of the Maya region, the Pacific coastal region of Guatemala -and its Central Mexican diasporic populations- is seen as the likely source of comales. As a result,...
Partnering for Power: Castillo de Huarmey Relations with the Wari (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By Middle Horizon Epoch 2 (AD 800–850) the Wari polity was a generation old and assumed to reflect a complex hegemony based on ruins of a cosmopolitan capital in the Ayacucho-Huanta valley and artifact associations among ethnically distinct communities throughout the Andes. The complexity includes shared artistic...
Plain Pots Do Travel: Insights into Mogollon Early Pithouse Period Pottery Circulation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Local Development and Cross-Cultural Interaction in Pre-Hispanic Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramics in the Mogollon region, particularly the Mimbres Mogollon, have been the focus of numerous neutron activation analysis (NAA) studies to discern pottery circulation and social networks throughout the region. However, most of these studies have focused on the painted...
Polychromes and People at 76 Draw, New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "25 Years in the Casas Grandes Region: Celebrating Mexico–U.S. Collaboration in the Gran Chichimeca" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. People of the Casas Grandes and Salado regions are known for their polychrome pottery. Often pottery from both areas are found at the same sites, but the degree of interaction between the areas is not known. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) was conducted on Ramos and Gila Polychrome...
Pots and People in Motion in Woodland Period Florida (2018)
Populations across northern Florida during the first millennium CE were highly interconnected as evidenced by shared patterns of mortuary practices, material culture, and settlement patterns. Social networks evidently were predicated on common ritual practices that found purchase in diverse and far-flung communities, especially those associated with "Swift Creek" and "Weeden Island" archaeological cultures. Through time, and with an expanding suite of religious practices and paraphernalia,...
Production and Exchange of the Earliest Ceramics in central Mexico (2018)
Compositional studies in central Mexico have largely focused on serving wares of the later Teotihuacan and Postclassic periods. Studies of the region’s earliest ceramics of the Formative period have been almost completely ignored. The earliest ceramics made in the region tend to be much coarser than the later serving wares, so we cannot use the existing reference databases to source them. Here we build the Formative reference database with a large sample of chemical and petrographic data...
A Provenance and Stylistic Study of Formative Caddo Vessels: Evidence for Specialized Ritual Craft Production and Long-Distance Exchange (2018)
Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis is used to determine whether Formative Caddo finewares (A.D. 850 -1150) were made locally in the Arkansas River Basin or produced by their Gulf Coastal Plain neighbors to the south. The preliminary INAA results, in concert with a stylistic study that indicates very few potters had the knowledge and skill to produce them, show that Formative Caddo finewares were made in the southern Caddo region and exported north to Arkansas River Basin mound centers for...
Recent Research in Copacabana, Bolivia, the Intinkala Sector (2018)
Copacabana has been a pilgrimage destination and a site of extraordinary reverence from Formative times to the present. Together with the Islands of the Sun and Moon, it formerly comprised one the most sacred ceremonial complexes in the Inca Empire. Recent archaeological research in Copacabana has focused on the Intinkala sector located just east of the modern basilica. The principal aim of the first season was to ascertain the nature of Inca engagement with this powerful locale as evidenced...
Reducing Collective Action Problems among Larger-Scale Societies: Building Trust, Assurance, and Cooperation at Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Puebla/Tlaxcala Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Collective action problems arise when individuals expend energy or resources to obtain a common goal or outcome. However, conflicting interests hinder cooperation and preclude joint action. Visibility and trust are two factors that reduce collective action problems among small and mid-sized groups, but research is limited on how these variables...
Renderings of Knowledge and History in the Jubones River Basin: Neutron Activation Analyses and Petrography in the Ceramics of Potrero Mendieta (ca. 1,000 BCE) (2018)
Inter-regional interaction cannot be defined simply by the unambiguous material evidence of exotic materials but also by the knowledge associated with the manufacture and movement of those materials. And thus, the physical properties of these materialized practices, which include human and non-human agents, are not unmovable facts or culturally specific interpretations but part of the histories of social interaction. This case-study examines the results from the compositional analysis of the...
Revisiting Tula, Hidalgo Epiclassic Ceramics: Progress and Recent NAA Results (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Significant progress has been made in the description and definition of typological and compositional assemblages of Tula, Hidalgo regional ceramics during the Epiclassic period of the Central Highlands. Neutron Activation Analysis conducted at the Archaeometry Laboratory and the Research Reactor Center at the University of Missouri (MURR) now includes...
Seeing Red: An Analysis of Archaeological Ochre in East Central Missouri (2018)
The Truman Road Site (23SC924), St. Charles County, Missouri, features a diversity of material remains and a long periods of occupation mostly occurring during the Late Archaic (3000 – 2500 BC) and Middle Woodland (100 BC – AD 500). For this region of prehistoric Missouri, ceramics and chert constitute the main evidence for understanding trade and cultural dynamics. Despite its relative ubiquity among sites, ochre has rarely been considered in such studies. Recognizing that this material is a...
Sicán Sociopolitical Organization in Lambayeque, Peru: Ceramic Compositional and Distributional Perspective (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We report the results of a recent chemical compositional analysis (INAA) of ceramic samples from multiple Middle Sicán (ca. 1000 CE) sites in the Lambayeque region on the north coast of Peru that offer important insights on the Middle Sicán sociopolitical and territorial organization. The analysis is an integral part of our cross-disciplinary testing of the...
State Formation and Economic Integration: New Perspectives from Ceramic Sourcing in the Oaxaca Valley, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The two occupations at Tilcajete, El Mogote and El Palenque, offer a unique perspective on the political and economic changes surrounding the rise of Monte Albán. Located in the southern arm of the Valley of Oaxaca, El Mogote was an important Rosario phase (700–500 BCE) community that grew in size and political importance during the...
Tlaxcallan Pottery Manufacture and Restricted Networks (2018)
The debate whether pottery sherds equal people or just their ideas has been ongoing since the days of pioneers such as Ford and Spaulding. The advent of new technologies has given a new wind to old debates in which the questions surrounding pottery styles are examined more closely to determine their origin. Compositional analysis has been especially helpful in shedding new light on the relations between artifacts and people. Compositional analysis carried out on Postclassic Tlaxcallan pottery...
Urban Economies and State "Peripheries": Angkorian Stoneware Ceramic Production and Distribution (2018)
Angkor’s agro-urban capital covered more than 60 square miles, and its landscape housed farmers and artisans. Constraints of the archaeological record limit our ability to document production scale of most activities; the genealogical skew of Angkor’s epigraphic record in another reason. Yet Greater Angkor’s gardens and fields must have fed residents in the Angkorian state’s epicenter. Artisans built its temples, sculpted temple images, and cast metal goods; specialists and communities tended...
The Western Connection: Using Comparative NAA Data to Source Glaze Wares from Tijeras Pueblo (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Non-local glaze-painted pottery types, such as Heshotautla and Kwakina polychromes, comprise more than 20% of the decorated ceramic assemblage at Tijeras Pueblo (LA581). Despite Tijeras Pueblo’s location at the eastern edge of the Albuquerque basin in the central Rio Grande region, these pottery types...