Lumping and Splitting: Design Variation on Mancos Black-on-white Pottery in the Central Mesa Verde Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Within the central Mesa Verde region, the Mancos Black-on-white pottery type is an enduring enigma. Mancos Black-on-white was produced from A.D. 920–1180 and includes a wide range in variation in design and technology. During its production period, nearly identical designs were used across the broader Ancestral Pueblo world. In the Cibola and Kayenta regions, for example, a similar range of designs were used, but archaeologists have separated this range of design variation into distinct, temporally sensitive, pottery types.

Under the rubric the Northern Chaco Outliers Project, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center is investigating the Lakeview Community, a cluster of four great houses in southwestern Colorado. Mancos Black-on-white is one of the most common pottery types recovered. Because of its prevalence and the vast amount of variation in the design and technology present on Mancos sherds, Crow Canyon archaeologists have devised a detailed, attribute-based analysis conducted on a sub-set of the 70,000 sherds analyzed to date. The goal of this project is to test whether these differences in design and technology correspond to temporal or production group differences across the community, allowing for more fine-grained discussions of this variable pottery type. Our presentation reports the preliminary results from this exciting study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32508