This book explores material culture and human adaptations to nature over time, with a focus on ceramics. The author also explores the role of ethnoarchaeology and ethnohistory as key elements of a broad research strategy that seeks to understand human interaction with nature over time.

This full-length portrait of a major style in folk pottery was originally published in Spanish by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista in 1981. Revised and enlarged, the present volume covers a wider scope. Kaplan discusses the nature and extent of the community formed by the potters of black-on-red ware, describing and classifying the pottery and the raw materials used. She examines the technique of pottery making by focusing on the role of learning and specialization in the transmission of style. Kaplan explores the patterns of traditional pottery and looks at distribution of the ware as well as at the daily and ceremonial contexts of its use, suggesting that style in material culture is a system that embodies group identity and provides a basis for group action. The markings, the color, the sizes, the shapes - in short, the style of this black-on-red pottery - are an expression of a number of ancient themes and myths that have shaped the Indian view of life over a long period.

Focusing on the native ceramic technology of central Mexico during the early colonial period and the present-day, this book offers a refreshing view into the process of cultural continuity and change in the indigenous Mesoamerican world after the Spanish conquest.

Dean E. Arnold made ten visits to Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico, witnessing the changes in transportation infrastructure, the use of piped water, and the development of tourist resorts. Even in this context of social change and changes in the demand for pottery, most of the potters in 1997 came from the families that had made pottery in 1965. This book traces changes and continuities in that population of potters, in the demand and distribution of pottery, and in the procurement of clay and temper, paste composition, forming, and firing.

Based on fieldwork and reflection over a period of almost fifty years, Maya Potters’ Indigenous Knowledge utilizes engagement theory to describe the indigenous knowledge of traditional Maya potters in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico. In this heavily illustrated narrative account, Dean E. Arnold examines craftspeople’s knowledge and skills, their engagement with their natural and social environments, the raw materials they use for their craft, and their process for making pottery. Following Lambros Malafouris, Tim Ingold, and Colin Renfrew, Arnold argues that potters’ indigenous knowledge is not just in their minds but extends to their engagement with the environment, raw materials, and the pottery-making process itself and is recursively affected by visual and tactile feedback. Pottery is not just an expression of a mental template but also involves the interaction of cognitive categories, embodied muscular patterns, and the engagement of those categories and skills with the production process. Indigenous knowledge is thus a product of the interaction of mind and material, of mental categories and action, and of cognition and sensory engagement—the interaction of both human and material agency. Engagement theory has become an important theoretical approach and “indigenous knowledge” (as cultural heritage) is the focus of much current research in anthropology, archaeology, and cultural resource management. While Dean Arnold’s previous work has been significant in ceramic ethnoarchaeology, Maya Potters' Indigenous Knowledge goes further, providing new evidence and opening up different concepts and approaches to understanding practical processes. It will be of interest to a wide variety of researchers in Maya studies, material culture, material sciences, ceramic ecology, and ethnoarchaeology.

The demographic upheavals that altered the social landscape of the Southwest from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries forced peoples from diverse backgrounds to literally remake their worlds—transformations in community, identity, and power that are only beginning to be understood through innovations in decorated ceramics. In addition to aesthetic changes that included new color schemes, new painting techniques, alterations in design, and a greater emphasis on iconographic imagery, some of the wares reflect a new production efficiency resulting from more specialized household and community-based industries. Also, they were traded over longer distances and were used more often in public ceremonies than earlier ceramic types. Through the study of glaze-painted pottery, archaeologists are beginning to understand that pots had “social lives” in this changing world and that careful reconstruction of the social lives of pots can help us understand the social lives of Puebloan peoples. In this book, fifteen contributors apply a wide range of technological and stylistic analysis techniques to pottery of the Rio Grande and Western Pueblo areas to show what it reveals about inter- and intra-community dynamics, work groups, migration, trade, and ideology in the precontact and early postcontact Puebloan world. The contributors report on research conducted throughout the glaze producing areas of the Southwest and cover the full historical range of glaze ware production. Utilizing a variety of techniques—continued typological analyses, optical petrography, instrumental neutron activation analysis, X-ray microprobe analysis, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy—they develop broader frameworks for examining the changing role of these ceramics in social dynamics. By tracing the circulation and exchange of specialized knowledge, raw materials, and the pots themselves via social networks of varying size, they show how glaze ware technology, production, exchange, and reflected a variety of dynamic historical and social processes. Through this material evidence, the contributors reveal that technological and aesthetic innovations were deliberately manipulated and disseminated to actively construct “communities of practice” that cut across language and settlement groups. The Social Life of Pots offers a wealth of new data from this crucial period of prehistory and is an important baseline for future work in this area. Contributors Patricia Capone Linda S. Cordell Suzanne L. Eckert Thomas R. Fenn Judith A. Habicht-Mauche Cynthia L Herhahn Maren Hopkins Deborah L. Huntley Toni S. Laumbach Kathryn Leonard Barbara J. Mills Kit Nelson Gregson Schachner Miriam T. Stark Scott Van Keuren

Pottery is one of the most important classes of artifacts available to archaeologists and anthropologists. Every year, volumes of data are generated detailing ceramic production, distribution, and consumption. How these data can be interpreted in relation to the social and cultural framework of prehistoric societies in Mesoamerica is the subject of this book. Nine chapters written by some of the most well known and respected scholars in the field offer readers an in-depth look at key advances from the past fifteen years. These scholars examine ethnoarchaeological studies and the Preclassic/Formative, Classic, and Postclassic periods and cover geographic areas from eastern to central Mesoamerica. In a series of case studies, contributors address a range of new and developing theories and methods for inferring the technological, organizational, and social dimensions of pottery economics, and draw on a range of sociopolitical examples. Specific topics include the impacts and costs of innovations, the role of the producer in technological choices, the outcomes when errors in vessel formation are tolerated or rectified, the often undocumented multiple lives and uses of ceramic pieces, and the difficulties associated with locating and documenting ceramic production areas in tropical lowlands. A compelling collection that clearly integrates and synthesizes a wide array of data, this book is the definitive text on pottery economics in Mesoamerica and an important contribution to the fields of anthropology, archaeology, ancient history, and the economics of pre-industrial societies. CONTENTS Acknowledgments 1 . Conceptual Issues in Mesoamerican Pottery Economics Christopher A. Pool and George J. Bey III 2 . An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective on Local Ceramic Production and Distribution in the Maya Highlands Michael Deal 3 . Why Was the Potter’s Wheel Rejected? Social Choice and Technological Change in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico Dean E. Arnold, Jill Huttar Wilson, and Alvaro L. Nieves 4 . Ceramic Production at La Joya, Veracruz: Early Formative Techno Logics and Error Loads Philip J. Arnold III 5 . Blanco Levantado: A New World Amphora George J. Bey III 6 . Pottery Production and Distribution in the Gulf Lowlands of Mesoamerica Barbara L. Stark 7 . Household Production and the Regional Economy in Ancient Oaxaca: Classic Period Perspectives from Hilltop El Palmillo and Valley-Floor Ejutla Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas 8 . Pottery Production and Exchange in the Petexbatun Polity, Petén, Guatemala Antonia E. Foias and Ronald L. Bishop 9 . Aztec Otumba, AD 1200--1600: Patterns of the Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Ceramic Products Thomas H. Charlton, Cynthia L. Otis Charlton, Deborah L. Nichols, and Hector Neff References Cited About the Contributors Index