Reading between the Lines: Salado Polychrome and (In)organic Paint Variability

Summary

During the late thirteenth century, the Salado Phenomenon swept across much of the U.S. Southwest, leaving its most indelible mark in the form of Salado Polychrome pottery. Chemical sourcing indicates that this pottery was produced in many of the areas in which it is found and many researchers now associate production areas with the settlement of Kayenta migrants. Archaeologists frequently use stylistic analyses to infer shared socio-cultural backgrounds. For example, some colleagues have noted similarities between earlier Kayenta pottery designs and those found on later Salado Polychromes. High-visibility attributes like motifs, however, are easily replicable. Low-visibility, technological attributes serve as better indicators of shared social backgrounds. In addition to decorative similarity, researchers suggest that black paint on Salado Polychrome vessels is almost exclusively organic in nature and thus consistent with earlier Kayenta production. Ongoing work at the Dinwiddie Site provides an opportunity to further explore this model. We use macroscopic and chemical analyses to characterize paint composition, thereafter exploring variability through space and time. Our results speak to the scale of integration among production communities and emphasize the role of cultural diversity within the Salado Phenomenon.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Perspectives on Salado   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage