Production and Exchange of the Earliest Ceramics in central Mexico

Summary

Compositional studies in central Mexico have largely focused on serving wares of the later Teotihuacan and Postclassic periods. Studies of the region’s earliest ceramics of the Formative period have been almost completely ignored. The earliest ceramics made in the region tend to be much coarser than the later serving wares, so we cannot use the existing reference databases to source them. Here we build the Formative reference database with a large sample of chemical and petrographic data generated from the earliest ceramics found in the Basin of Mexico, the Teotihuacan Valley, the Toluca Valley, western Puebla, Tlaxcala, southern Hidalgo, and eastern Morelos. We add Formative ceramics opportunistically sampled from the Soconusco, the Tehuacán Valley, and Pánuco in northern Veracruz for comparison. While the objectives of this study were not intended to highlight long-distance exchange, both regional and interregional trade of ceramics were identified. These patterns of interaction were key in producing the interregional style horizons that developed during the Early and Middle Formative periods in Mesoamerica.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19914