Renderings of Knowledge and History in the Jubones River Basin: Neutron Activation Analyses and Petrography in the Ceramics of Potrero Mendieta (ca. 1,000 BCE)

Summary

Inter-regional interaction cannot be defined simply by the unambiguous material evidence of exotic materials but also by the knowledge associated with the manufacture and movement of those materials. And thus, the physical properties of these materialized practices, which include human and non-human agents, are not unmovable facts or culturally specific interpretations but part of the histories of social interaction. This case-study examines the results from the compositional analysis of the ceramic wares from the site of Potrero Mendieta, in southwestern Ecuador, and the historical processes of social interaction and movement of peoples associated with this context through different regions by way of the inter-Andean Jubones River Valley at around the first millennium BCE. This archaeological analysis departs from the notion that the "physical world" and the "social world" are mutually constituted. The application of archaeological sciences to analyze materials at the compositional level generates data suitable for the description and interpretation of the historical processes of human mobility and social interaction which in turn presents how materials and their physical qualities have functioned as participants and mediators of history and not only as a background to history.

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): 18833