Two Decades (Almost) of Regional Clay Surveys by the EAF: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities

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.

An early and ongoing goal of the EAF was to not only generate compositional data on archaeological artifacts but also to build comprehensive collections and elemental databases of natural materials that had potentially been used to manufacture craft objects. To date, EAF efforts to build collections of geological reference material have focused primarily on clays from Andean South America. Since 2005, EAF collaborators have undertaken numerous semi-systematic surveys of clay deposits in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. LA-ICP-MS analyses of clays acquired during these surveys have produced critically important compositional data, which, when used in tandem with elemental analyses of ceramics, are instrumental in comparative understandings of pottery production and circulation. We concentrate on four of these regional surveys: those undertaken in the Moquegua Valley and the Cuzco region of Peru, the Azapa Valley of Chile, and Bolivia’s Department of Cochabamba. We discuss what motivated each survey, the array of scientific, artistic, and community collaborations and methods adopted, and the opportunities and challenges furnished by the distinct geological context of each survey region. We also reflect upon how the elemental database of clays from each survey enhances reconstructions of regional pottery traditions and suggest protocols for future surveys.

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): 37997.0