Not so Exotic After All?: Results from A Characterization of "Puebloan" and "Micaceous" Ceramics from Dismal River Aspect Sites

Summary

Small numbers of supposedly "Southwestern" sherds appear at many sites on the Great Plains. Some Dismal River aspect (AD 1650-1725) people living on the Central and High Plains had extensive contact with people in northern New Mexico and may have lived with Puebloan migrants in the late 1600s. Exotic ceramics appear at several Dismal River sites including red slipped wares and micaceous sherds. Using a combination of NAA and petrography, we characterized a sample of these sherds from several Dismal River aspect sites in Kansas and Nebraska to better determine the origin of these northern Rio Grande ceramics. Using NAA, we determined that some of the micaceous sherds were likely made in northern New Mexico while others were made elsewhere. A lack of comparative data from mica sources in Colorado and Wyoming make further sourcing difficult. Red slipped sherds from sites in Scott County, Kansas that look similar to Tewa Red wares, were instead constructed from materials available to potters in western Kansas. Northern Rio Grande potters living with Dismal River aspect groups maintained culturally specific ceramic technologies such as the use of red slips while also importing micaceous vessels from both their traditional homeland and from other sources.

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Cite this Record

Not so Exotic After All?: Results from A Characterization of "Puebloan" and "Micaceous" Ceramics from Dismal River Aspect Sites. Sarah Trabert, David Hill, Margaret Beck, B. Sunday Eiselt, Jeffrey Ferguson. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 397426)

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Spatial Coverage

min long: -113.95; min lat: 30.751 ; max long: -97.163; max lat: 48.865 ;