Petrographic and Geochemical Analysis of Pottery from the White Marl Archaeological Site, St. Catherine Parish, Jamaica, West Indies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

White Marl is the largest, most intensively inhabited late-precolonial site documented for Jamaica, with an artifact assemblage dominated by massive quantities of ceramics. Its size and structural organization suggest that it functioned as a major sociopolitical/economic hub among the increasingly complex chiefdoms in the Greater Antilles. To address the origin of materials from which White Marl pottery was produced, petrographic and geochemical analyses were conducted on samples of ceramics and nearby sediments. Compositional analyses of White Marl ceramics display consistencies across sherds that represent the full range of vessel forms and functions. Mineralogically, clay, quartz, well-weathered rock fragments, and feldspars dominate, with minor opaque minerals, muscovite, and amphiboles. Local raw sediments display varying compositions across samples, although one sand sample collected ~60 m south of the site was consistent with the pottery. The homogeneity of the analyzed ceramic population and similarity to nearby sediments indicates that White Marl pottery was locally produced, with the proposed material origin being the Above Rocks Inlier granodiorite. However, some sherds consistently plotted as outliers in the neutron activation analysis, suggesting a different geochemical origin for those few samples. Current analyses are investigating sherds from sites contemporaneous with White Marl to address potential intercommunity relations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ceramic Petrographers in the Americas: Recent Research and Methodological Advances   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39062.0