It’s (Not) Just a Phase: Characterizing Surfacing Techniques in the Ancient Andes

Summary

This presentation introduces a technique for quantitative analysis of ceramic surface topography, using false-color images generated through reflectance transformation imaging and automated quantitative analysis using cell-counting software. A preliminary study of surface topography variation in Early Formative and Middle Formative ceramics from Chiripa, Bolivia, will be presented, along with an outline of a reference database, Ceramic-Surface Topography of the Andes. The purpose of this study has been to expand the documentation and analysis of surfacing techniques. Alongside extensive attributional analysis, expedient quantitative analysis of various surface-topographies can enrich operational sequence studies and illuminate the creative environment in the past. The time spent burnishing a ceramic is a compressed time of repetitive and monotonous actions, when gestures blur into the next as easily as the former, and the non-linearity of productive labor can be seen and heard. Burnished ceramics, like quilts in a knitting circle, were audience to the kinds of social interactions which reinforce ties, circulate gossip, and hash out political grievance and agreement. Bringing surface-topography into the larger project of attribute analysis and archaeometry may help in understanding the relationship between the production of objects and political objectives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18873