Petrography, Production, and Provenance of Ceramics from La Blanca, Guatemala

Summary

The Middle Preclassic (900-600 BCE) was a critical time of political and social centralization in the Guatemalan lowlands. Of particular interest is La Blanca, one of the first polities to rise and show signs of regional influence and potential urbanization. To reconstruct everyday life I am using excavated ceramic refuse to observe dynamics surrounding three households. This, in turn, elucidates elements of La Blanca’s political economy associated with the manufacturing and production of ceramics. To observe this I am adapting Dickinson’s methods of mapping interaction spheres using petrography to a household level. Reviews of local geologic sources and 90 sherds have been collected. Petrographic examination of sherds has shown three distinct compositional groups: Mineralic, Volcanic, and Vitric. From these groups, representative samples have been selected and point counted using the Gazzi-Dickinson method. To correlate sherd samples to potential sources, three modern sands were sampled and seven Paleo sands from the Missouri University Research Reactor were provided. These samples were analyzed using the same methods as the sherds. Preliminary results indicate a local geologic provenance for raw materials and varied clay sources and manufacturing techniques among households. This suggests that each household was producing their own ceramics and trading amongst themselves.

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): 21752