Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Over the last two decades, ceramic petrography has played an integral role in deciphering the social networks associated with past pottery production and exchange. Pots themselves are the outcome of individual or collaborative practices governed by larger social bodies. While the burgeoning literature on communities of practice and technological style has made use of pottery analyses, we argue that the benefits of ceramic petrography to this kind of research have not been fully realized. Point-counting specifically provides information on tempering and forming techniques that were often mediated by kinship, marriage, and identity. Provenance data serve as evidence of object exchange that followed the contours of political and religious movements. At root, these insights share common ground; they tell us how pottery making was informed by specific kinds of relationships that existed between potters and larger social networks. The case studies presented here use a variety of techniques within ceramic petrography to decipher these relationships. Our goal is to showcase through diachronic, cross-cultural analyses the utility of using all aspects of petrographic analysis to better characterize past potting networks. We ultimately use these case studies to demonstrate how social archaeology can benefit by employing a multifaceted petrographic approach.
Other Keywords
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: Ceramic Petrography •
Ceramic Analysis •
Communities of Practice •
Craft Production •
Mississippian •
Material Culture and Technology •
Household •
Woodland •
network analysis •
Ancestral Pueblo
Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) •
United States of America (Country) •
USA (Country) •
Delaware (State / Territory) •
Georgia (State / Territory) •
Mississippi (State / Territory) •
Tennessee (State / Territory) •
North Carolina (State / Territory) •
Kentucky (State / Territory) •
West Virginia (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
-
Ceramic Production at the Stone-Walled Citadel of Shimao: Initial Results of Petrographic Analysis (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Over the last 10 years, excavations at the early Bronze Age site of Shimao (2300–1800 BC), in northern Shaanxi Province, have transformed our understanding of the archaeology of early China. What was previously seen as an area that was peripheral to the development of early dynastic centers is now being heralded by...
-
Establishing Mississippian Potting Communities at the Wickliffe Mounds Site, Kentucky (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
-
A Monte Carlo Approach to Estimating Plausible Ceramic Similarity Values from Fabric Characterizations (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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,...
-
Petrographic Analysis of Ancestral Pueblo Glaze-Painted Pottery from the Southern Rio Grande Region (Rio Abajo) in New Mexico, USA (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 Rio Grande region of New Mexico, USA, has a long tradition of understanding ceramic technology and provenance through petrographic analyses. Despite this, the Rio Abajo subregion continues to lag somewhat behind the more detailed analyses from the central and northern Rio Grande. This study presents an...
-
Pottery Traditions in the Hyperarid Core of the Atacama Desert: Petrography and Geochemistry of Iluga Túmulos Ceramics (Tarapacá, Northern Chile) (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
-
Pottery-Making Practices and Technological Choices during the Early Period (ca. 200 BC–AD 600) at the Southern Sector of Abaucán Valley (Dept. Tinogasta, Province of Catamarca, Argentina): A View from Ceramic Petrography (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 southern sector of the Abaucán Valley presents an important prehispanic occupation belonging to the Early Formative period (ca. 200 BC–AD 600). The main material evidence of this occupation is given by the presence of small household units characterized by a quadrangular settlement pattern associated with...
-
Retracing the Relations between Virú-Gallinazo Communities, Early Intermediate Period, Northern Coast of Peru: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Technology and Petrography (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Until recently, it was thought that during the Early Intermediate Period on the northern coast of Peru, the Virú-Gallinazo populations only coexisted for a short time with the Mochicas. Recent archaeological operations in the Virú Valley now reveal that in this region they developed without interruption from 200 BC...
-
Understanding Pottery Production at El Campanario (Huarmey-Peru) through Ceramic Paste Analysis and pXRF (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 present research focuses on the strategies in the procurement of raw material used in the production of pottery at the El Campanario site during the beginning of the Late Intermediate period (AD 1150–1280). The manufacture of pottery occurred within the domestic areas at this site and while domestic pottery was...