Making Pottery, Making Identity: Geochemical and Design Analyses from a Small Middle San Juan Site, New 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.

This study addresses both the geochemical composition and the decorative content of ceramic sherds recovered from the Box B Site (LA 16660), New Mexico. Thorough and successful ceramic analyses by Barbara Mills, Hayward Franklin, and Elizabeth Garrett took place in the 1980s. This current project reexamines white ware ceramics from ca. AD 1100 by taking a communities of practice approach and integrating both compositional and decorative analyses. The goal is to better understand how potters from a small residential site located along the border of two large Ancestral Pueblo ceramic traditions—Chaco and Mesa Verde—practiced pottery-making in the midst of a regional power shift from Chaco Canyon to the north. Compositional data, collected through petrography and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), reveal raw material procurement, slip and paste recipes, and even firing conditions. Painted decorations speak to identity formation in a potential borderland setting.

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): 36010.0