Pots, Ethnoarchaeology, and Snake-Oil: James Skibo’s Lasting Impact on the Future of Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

James Skibo changed the way we study pottery. Jim’s archaeological career incorporated many different facets of archaeological research including experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, archaeology, and theory, all focusing on pottery research. One of his biggest influences is combining ethnoarchaeology and pottery use-alteration. Jim’s ethnoarchaeological Kalinga research in the Philippines and his subsequent books (1992, 2016) has and will continue to provide a new perspective concerning how people use pottery to answer larger archaeological questions such as issues related to diet, social stratification, and cultural change. Besides contributing to the field, Jim’s encouraging outlook when mentoring students, even students not at his university, such as myself, had a major positive impact on our careers. This paper examines Jim’s contribution to ceramic ethnoarchaeology and his research on pottery use-alteration as it has been utilized in my own research among the Gamo living in southwestern Ethiopia. While some push snake-oil cures that fail to have a lasting legacy, Jim’s research has already proven to have significantly influenced the field of archaeology, which will continue to grow with each new generation of scholars.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Method and Theory: Papers in Honor of James M. Skibo, Part I   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23269