A Foreign Ingredient in a Local Tradition: Chaco Canyon Pottery and the Chaco–Chuska Connection

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the mid-twentieth century, Anna Shepard discovered that much of the pottery found in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, was apparently produced in the Chuska mountain and slope area some 70 km to the west. Since then, Southwest archaeologists have studied the dynamics of Chaco–Chuska interaction and the intensity and complexity of Southwest exchange patterns. As part of a larger study of late (ca. and post-AD 1100) Chaco Canyon ceramic assemblages from sites including Pueblo Bonito, I examined a sample of Chaco Black-on-white (ca. AD 1075-1150) and Chaco-McElmo Black-on-white (ca. AD 1100-1200) sherds. These two ceramic types, while never the most abundant in an assemblage, were likely locally made in Chaco Canyon and are emblematic of Chaco’s late occupation. Under magnification, a small number of sherds with the typical macroscopic properties of Chaco and Chaco-McElmo Black-on-white contained abundant Chuska trachyte, a dark igneous rock nonlocal to Chaco Canyon but characteristic of Chuska pottery. This mix of local ceramic tradition and foreign ceramic ingredient frustrates archaeological typologies but serves as a reminder of the movements of past potters, the raw materials they used, and the pots they made.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38901.0