Ceramics as Means to Ends and Means of Expression in Terminal Classic Northwestern Honduras

As perhaps the artifact most commonly recovered from most Mesoamerican sites, ceramics have figured prominently in efforts to reconstruct culture history and describe sociopolitical and economic patterns at various spatial and temporal scales. Much of this work has focused on analyzing pottery vessel fragments for the information they can provide on manufacturing techniques, vessel functions, and meanings conveyed primarily through stylistic modes. As valuable as these studies have been they are often stymied by our inability to identify who fashioned ceramic containers, at what scales, and how manufacturing processes might have been implicated in the exercise of power over others or the power to resist such pretensions. The contributions other fired-clay objects might have made to these processes are often ignored because their rarity in assemblages frustrates efforts to investigate them systematically. This session addresses both issues by presenting evidence gathered in the Naco valley and its environs concerning: the diverse ways pottery vessels were fashioned here during the Terminal Classic (AD 800-1000); how that variation was possibly related to local political and economic processes; and, what technological, formal, and distributional studies of a very unusual ceramic artifact, the candelero, contribute to understanding these developments.