Potting Communities on a Purépecha Landscape, Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Documentation of the chaîne opératoire allows us to investigate the manufacturing steps that transform raw materials into finished products. Study of these steps can facilitate discussions about the intentions of ancient potters and potter communities of practice. In western Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic period (AD 1350–1530), potters within the Purépecha Empire created imperial-style pottery with spouts and globular supports that were often decorated with polychrome coloration and resist firing treatments. These imperial-style vessels may have been created in a centralized location in the imperial core region. One way to examine these vessels is by focusing on the production chain of imperial-style vessels at a site within the core region that was occupied before, during, and after the empire developed in the Middle to Late Postclassic periods. Previous petrographic and geochemical work at the site of Angamuco (Michoacán, Mexico) indicates that ceramics, including imperial style vessels, were created from both local and regional raw materials, and that these raw materials did not change drastically for over 1,000 years (ca. AD 250–1530). Study of several production steps in the Angamuco pottery considers the possibility of multiple communities of potters who operated as an empire coalesced.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36979.0