Monitoring Cultural Change through Ceramics: A Data Comparison from Typology, Sourcing of Pastes, and Symmetry Analysis of Ceramics from the Prehispanic Tarascan Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As a common material and highly plastic technology, in Mesoamerica ceramics are used to define spatial and chronological units of past social, political, and economic structures. In the present study, we compare (1) the use of the type-variety classification as a “chaîne opératoire,” (2) the use of INA and thin-section petrography in sourcing ceramic pastes, and (3) symmetry analysis of the design structure of ceramics. The samples come from central and northern Michoacán from the Late Preclassic to the Late Postclassic periods (200 BCE–CE 1522), primarily from sites in the Lake Pátzcuaro and Zacapu Basins. The goal will be to determine how each method monitors the timing and rate of sociocultural stability and change and to propose what kinds of social processes each method is able to document.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37762.0