Neutron Activation Analysis of San Juan Red Ware Pottery

Summary

San Juan Red Ware pottery is most common in southeastern Utah, where most of it appears to have been made, but is widely distributed throughout the Four Corners region from about A.D. 750 to 1100. Neutron Activation Analysis of San Juan Red Ware potsherds shows that there were numerous production locales, and red ware pottery from southeast Utah falls into several distinguishable chemical groups. These chemical groups have distributions that suggest relatively little exchange among the production area sites. Despite differing from red ware producers in styles of material culture (ceramics, architecture, and settlement patterns), and probably social identity, Pueblo I people living to the east of the red ware production zone also obtained San Juan Red Ware. Most of the red ware on southwest Colorado Pueblo I sites appears to come from the eastern part of the production zone, but the distribution of the chemical groups varies from site to site. Red ware exchange thus appears to have linked Pueblo I people across the Mesa Verde region through complex networks of interaction that cross-cut apparent differences among social groups.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage