Patricia L. Crown

Learning to Make Pottery in the Prehispanic American Southwest

Recent studies of apprenticeship and learning provide a framework for understanding how the social contexts of learning affect the material outcome of the learning process among potters. Using methods derived from educational psychology to examine prehispanic pottery made and painted by unskilled potters from the American Southwest, it is possible to evaluate cognitive maturity and motor skills. Comparisons of two culture areas indicate differences among Southwestern populations in teaching frameworks and how children were incorporated into craft production.

The Origins of Southwestern Ceramic Containers: Women's Time Allocation and Economic Intensification

In the Greater American Southwest, ceramic containers were not manufactured until A.D. 1, as much as fifteen hundred years after the appearance of the first cultigens and eight hundred years after the appearance of the first ceramic figurines. A model for pottery origins developed by James A. Brown is tested using Southwestern data. Pottery containers were produced in conjunction with increasing sedentism and a greater dependence on cultivated foods. Production of ceramic containers increased womens workloads and created scheduling conflicts with subsistence pursuits. Southwestern women began producing pottery when changing social and economic conditions made the increased costs of ceramic manufacture acceptable. Changes in processing and storage technology involving the use of ceramic vessels increased the yields from cultivated crops.

Sensitivity, Precision, and Accuracy: Their Roles in Ceramic Compositional Data Bases

Differences in analytical sensitivity, precision, and accuracy exist among techniques and laboratories involved in the chemical analysis of archaeological ceramics. Large differences in these analytical parameters become significant in the formulation of data bases where comparability of the data is being sought. Small differences become significant when comparing pottery produced from clay resources located within a discrete geological environment. To better assess and report on the analytical results being obtained from laboratories, neutronactivation analysis and X-ray fluorescence are discussed relative to the level of precision required for ceramic characterization studies, the use of standards, and the preparation and submission of samples for commercial laboratory analysis.

Learning and Craft Production: An Introduction

Understanding the process by which technological skills are learned provides a means of recognizing the result of manufacturing activities by different segments of a society. It may also provide useful clues to social organization and even the recognition of group interactions. Understanding how the producers of material culture become who they are may help anthropologists understand continuity and change in material culture. Various, sometimes conflicting, theories about the process of learning combined with ethnoarchaeological and experimental approaches are used to explore some specific cases in which learning appears to affect the production and distribution of material culture attributes.

LIFE HISTORIES OF POTS AND POTTERS : SITUATING THE INDIVIDUAL IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeologists often implicitly assume that individual ceramic objects were the work of a single individual artisan. Ethnographic and archaeological data suggest that this assumption should be questioned. Ceramics from the Greater American Southwest demonstrate that multiple hands contribute to the finished products in two ways. Two artisans may collaborate on vessels in various combinations of task differentiation. Alternatively, some vessels are modified over time, with artisans adding new features to existing vessels in diachronic collaboration. Such collaborative vessels have implications for understanding labor demands, learning and teaching frameworks, specialized production, and the life histories of ceramics.

Evaluating the Construction Sequence and Population of Pot Creek Pueblo, Northern New Mexico

Continuing interest in the process of aggregation in the American Southwest requires accurate reconstruction of population figures for prehistoric pueblos. Since site size (rooms/floor space) often serves as a proxy for population size, evaluation of site growth is crucial for population reconstruction. Problems in dating are discussed with reference to Pot Creek Pueblo in northern New Mexico. The construction sequence is interpreted using 236 treering dates and wall abutment relations between rooms. Site growth and changing site structure are described. Calculation of room use life permits formulation of two contrasting models of pueblo growth. Construction and remodeling dates indicate a short use life for the adobe rooms. I argue that, although the pueblo grew in surface area and numbers of rooms, population size may not have changed dramatically from A.D. 1270 to 1310, with population increase before abandonment at about 1320.

Modifying pottery and Kivas at Chaco: Pentimento, restoration, or renewal?

Patterns of use of ceramic objects and masonry architecture at Chaco Canyon in the southwestern United States indicate refurbishing of some vessels and architectural forms. Ceramic cylinder jars show evidence for obliteration of earlier designs and subsequent repainting and refiring of new designs. Communal structures, or kivas, were dismantled and rebuilt. Three possible explanations for these patterns are explored: revision of errors, restoration of worn surfaces, or ritual renewal. Renewal appears the most likely explanation for most of the patterning seen, providing a fuller picture of Chacoan ritual life and beliefs. Implications for research in the Chaco area and greater Southwest are discussed.

Ritual Black Drink consumption at Cahokia.

Chemical analyses of organic residues in fragments of pottery from the large site of Cahokia and surrounding smaller sites in Illinois reveal theobromine, caffeine, and ursolic acid, biomarkers for species of Ilex (holly) used to prepare the ritually important Black Drink. As recorded during the historic period, men consumed Black Drink in portions of the American Southeast for ritual purification. This first demonstrated discovery of biomarkers for Ilex occurs in beaker vessels dating between A.D. 1050 and 1250 from Cahokia, located far north of the known range of the holly species used to prepare Black Drink during historic times. The association of Ilex and beaker vessels indicates a sustained ritual consumption of a caffeine-laced drink made from the leaves of plants grown in the southern United States.

Water Storage in the Prehistoric Southwest

ABSTRACTPrehistoric water storage features occur throughout the Southwest, dating between 6000 B.C. and historic times. A typology for over 150 features provides a means for classifying the basins and assessing the variability in the technology used to access and store water. Excavation is usually necessary for accurate evaluation of feature function. Access to impounded water freed populations from the need to settle near natural water sources and permitted aggregation above the limit imposed by available natural water supplies.

Ritual drinks in the pre-Hispanic US Southwest and Mexican Northwest

Significance This article presents the results of a large-scale National Science Foundation-funded study of organic residues from archaeological sites in the US Southwest/Mexican Northwest. It reveals widespread use of two different caffeinated plants, cacao and holly, as the basis for drinks used in communal, ritual gatherings. This is the largest study of its kind, both in terms of numbers of samples and in terms of temporal/spatial scope. It is the first to argue for holly beverage consumption in the US Southwest/Mexican Northwest. The combined evidence for cacao and holly beverage consumption has implications for our understanding of distant resource acquisition and shared cultural practices in North America. Chemical analyses of organic residues in fragments of pottery from 18 sites in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest reveal combinations of methylxanthines (caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline) indicative of stimulant drinks, probably concocted using either cacao or holly leaves and twigs. The results cover a time period from around A.D. 750–1400, and a spatial distribution from southern Colorado to northern Chihuahua. As with populations located throughout much of North and South America, groups in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest likely consumed stimulant drinks in communal, ritual gatherings. The results have implications for economic and social relations among North American populations.