Ruminations on Puebloan Ethnic Diversity and Ceramic Specialization in the Ancient Western San Juan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Though traditionally perceived as representing two distinct Puebloan subcultures, San Juan Red Ware and Tsegi Orange Ware are best understood as representing a single ceramic tradition whose production geography shifted several times between the eighth and fourteenth centuries, independently of associated gray ware and white ware ceramic traditions. That history suggests that red ware production was restricted to a well-defined, persistent group of production specialists who occasionally moved as a group between cultural territories. The late-11th century shift in red ware production from San Juan Red Ware in the Mesa Verdean northern San Juan to Tsegi Orange Ware in an empty quarter of the Kayentan territory to the southwest, coincides with a proliferation of great houses and associated Chaco-connected features and institutions in the north and may reflect a "voting with the feet" response of red ware producers to the expanding great house system. This presentation presents the hypothesis that ancient red ware production was tied to a branch of ancestral Keres-speaking Pueblo people, citing circumstantial archaeological, linguistic and ethnohistoric evidence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23270