Persistence in Clay: A Thousand Years of Ceramic Traditions at Etlatongo in the Ñuu Savi Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological research in the Nochixtlan Valley of the Ñuu Savi region has been stymied by the lack of useful ceramic chronologies when compared to other parts of Mesoamerica. Presently, only three phases cover the last 1,800 years of precontact occupation, which makes it difficult to make meaningful comparisons with neighboring regions. This has created the perception that development in the valley paralleled what transpired in other areas, or that there were long periods of social stability followed by moments of dramatic change. Recent excavations at Etlatongo have yielded significant ceramic collections that may help elucidate existent predicaments by making us to see ceramic traditions in a new light. Defined as learned and repeated practices that draw on embodied knowledge, traditions are actualized forms of making memory that transcend the inheritance of one’s past. In this way, traditions articulate both continuity and change, through an array of different socio­cultural practices. In this paper, I describe how ceramic traditions at Etlatongo contingently changed to interrogate whether our long chronological phases may correspond to persistent traditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39852.0