Andrew Roddick

Temporalities of the Formative Period Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia:

Within the last 15 years archaeologists have developed a ‘dwelling’ perspective in studies of prehistoric landscapes. This research takes a critical approach to time, highlighting the temporality of practices in both daily life and longer-term processes. In this article I investigate temporalities of the Middle (800–200 BC) and Late Formative (200 BC–AD 500) periods on the Taraco Peninsula (Bolivia), drawing on data produced by the Taraco Archaeological Project. Particular attention is paid to long-term landscape tempos, place-making and the intertwined rhythms of technical practice. I end with a brief discussion of the temporal changes that correspond with the urbanization processes seen at the Middle Horizon (AD 500–950) center of Tiwanaku.

Arcillas and Alfareros : Clay and Temper Mining Practices in the Lake Titicaca Basin

This chapter aims to integrate archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research on ceramic production in the Lake Titicaca basin. Drawing on over 60 years of scholarship exploring the early stages of ceramic manufacture, we examine the acquisition of clays at quarries and the subsequent processing of these raw materials. Investigations into clay quarries have often focused on the availability of raw materials appropriate for pottery production. This research has included pedestrian survey for clays and sediments, and geochemical and mineralogical work on the quality of clays (Bishop et al. 1982; Neff et al. 1992). While such work is unquestionably useful (and unfortunately still rare in some regions), the dynamic nature of clays makes defining historic and prehistoric sources difficult. As a result, many archaeologists have considered these early technical stages through other means. For instance, research on prehistoric ceramics has long included careful analysis of ceramic pastes—the mixture of the aplastic inclusions and the plastic clay components of ceramics (for a good summary, see Arnold 2000). These findings have permitted for variability in local recipes to be correlated with regional and sometimes local deposits. In this work some have deployed sophisticated analytical tools in the laboratory to examine the techno-functional aspects of particular technological choices at quarry sites. This research has tended to focus on the relative performance of particular materials under a range of conditions (Bronitsky and Hamer 1986; Skibo et al. 1989; Summerhayes 1997).