Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Inca *Aríbalos from the Bandelier Collection, American Museum of Natural History

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Found from highland Ecuador to northwest Argentina, the Inca narrow-mouth jar, or *aríbalo, is the most widely distributed marker of the period of imperial expansion across the Andes (ca. 1400–1530s). Hiram Bingham made the first formal description of the *aríbalo more than a century ago, as part of the first formal classification of Inca pottery. In the past century, other researchers have noted variations in shape and surface decoration seen in excavated *aríbalos and museum collections. These differences might be attributed to differences in workshop practices or provincial identity across the empire, but no quantitative analysis of vessel shape has yet been published. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of an ongoing project that has produced high-resolution 3D scans of Inca jars from the Bandelier Collection at the American Museum of Natural History. Working with a large sample that was collected during the 1890s, we performed geometric morphometric analysis to assess the consistency of shape seen in 24 Inca *aríbalos. This research provides significant insights into Inca potting practices, which can be compared with the production practices and vessel shapes of earlier Andean societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Geometric Morphometrics in Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32580