Specialized Pottery Production in Antiquity in the Southwestern United States

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Production of pottery for exchange and/or for markets was an important component of socio-economic systems in the prehistory of the Southwestern United States. Specialized production has been documented among societies of various levels of complexity in diverse settings from the Arizona Strip in the north to the Sonoran Desert in the south. Important questions include when did specialized production become important in local and regional economies and what processes were associated. Evidence suggests that production for exchange was present in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona by A.D. 700, if not before. A strong case for early production on the consumer end is the Mustang site in the Verde River Valley located 90 km east of Phoenix, where 70 percent of the pottery from an Early Formative component was not locally produced, and multiple production sources were identified including temper types specific to the middle Gila River Valley 80 km (54 mi) distant. Social mechanisms are suggested to account for this distribution. Specialized pottery production, and likely other materials, for exchange and/or markets established conditions for subsequent cultural elaboration in the U.S. Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36726.0