Establishing Chemical Signatures for Cabuza Style Pottery and the Tiwanaku Tradition Using Portable X-ray Florescence (pXRF)

Summary

Portable X-ray Florescence (pXRF)was used to analyze the chemical composition of 60 Tiwanaku and derived style ceramic sherds from different locations in the south central Andes. The results indicate that there are four distinct geochemical groups and that the local Cabuza style pottery from survey collections in the Azapa Valley in Chile has a distinct chemical composition from all other Tiwanaku tradition ceramics. The results also indicate that pXRF is a viable technique for distinguishing between local and imported ceramics and, when considered in tandem with contextual and stylistic data, can provide important information on Tiwanaku ceramic sourcing, technology and exchange.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Regional Perspectives on the Tiwanaku Collapse: "Post-expansive" chronology, cultural transformation and ethnogenesis in the south central Andes

Keywords

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