Palace Pottery Production on Cerro Baúl: The Particularity of Paste Recipes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Decorated ceramic vessels carried meaningful symbols and were an important element of the Wari Empire's political economy. Wari, a powerful early Andean state, expanded sometime near the middle of the first millennium and pioneered institutions that were refined and deployed by the later Inca Empire. Wari officials used pottery to display, serve, and consume alcoholic beverages. Vessels of different sizes and forms were smashed and incorporated into offerings of several kinds. Smaller pots of varying quality were included in the graves of people with different ranks, and matched sets may have been used for ceremonial toasting or other symbolic actions during ritual performances. Evidence for the production of decorated vessels has been found alongside or embedded in the residences of intermediate elites at Conchopata, a site near the Empire's capital, and Cerro Baúl, the polity's furthest southern provincial center. In this paper, results from LA-ICP-MS analysis of raw materials and unfired sherds found in the palace at Cerro Baúl are compared to those from other vessels at the site and in the region to identify what types of pottery were made in the palace and assess their value and distribution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38979.0