Is It Hot Enough Yet? Reconstructing Firing Temperatures for Prehistoric Honduran Ceramics through Re-Firing Experiments

Summary

Investigations conducted in the Naco valley and its environs within NW Honduras from 1975-2008 have revealed multiple facilities in which ceramic containers were fired. The vast majority of these date to the Late (AD 600-800) and Terminal Classic periods (AD 800-1000). Their diverse forms and dimensions hint at variations in aspects of production including the temperatures at which the vessels were heated and the degree of control artisans exercised over the manufacturing process. One line of evidence that we have pursued in trying to describe this variability involves re-firing a sample of over 200 pottery sherds that span a wide range of domestic and decorated Late and Terminal Classic taxa derived from settlements that fashioned, and those that consumed, ceramic containers. The results of these tests are used to reconstruct the varied ways craftworkers who fabricated different classes of vessels in diverse facilities at sundry locations might have participated in the area’s political economy and to infer how their roles in those relations changed over time.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Ceramics as Means to Ends and Means of Expression in Terminal Classic Northwestern Honduras

Keywords

Spatial Coverage