Tlaxcallan Pottery Manufacture and Restricted Networks

Summary

The debate whether pottery sherds equal people or just their ideas has been ongoing since the days of pioneers such as Ford and Spaulding. The advent of new technologies has given a new wind to old debates in which the questions surrounding pottery styles are examined more closely to determine their origin. Compositional analysis has been especially helpful in shedding new light on the relations between artifacts and people. Compositional analysis carried out on Postclassic Tlaxcallan pottery from surface collections is compared with visual identification carried out in the initial technical analysis of the assemblage. While that initial analysis identified varied points of origin for stylistically foreign pottery, compositional analysis eliminates the probability that these styles were imported from faraway places, and increases the likelihood that their production was more localized, possibly tapping clay sources within Tlaxcallan itself or nearby sources. This possibility supports the idea that Tlaxcallan’s access to foreign goods was limited as Aztec power increased, but also that there seems to have been a demand for these foreign objects that was met with entrepreneurial ingenuity by Pochteca merchants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17685