Crossing Comb Ridge: Pottery Production and Procurement Among Southeast Utah Great House Communities

Abstract

Understanding how the Chaco regional system operated requires examining the social networks maintained by great house communities during both the peak and decline ofChaco's influence. We used neutron activation analysis (NAA) of pottery, kiln wasters, and clays from three great house communities in southeast Utah (Bluff, Cottonwood Wash, and Comb Wash) to examine pottery production and the interaction networks of their residents. West of Comb Ridge, most gray ware jars or the materials they were made from were imported from east of Comb Ridge in both Chaco and post-Chaco times, while importation of painted white wares changed in the post-Chaco era as local production increased. This counters the expectation that painted pots are more likely to be exchanged than cooking jars. Kiln sherds and prepared clays are shown to be better identifiers of production area than raw clays, and paste color is confirmed as a useful clay source indicator in the Comb Ridge vicinity. Great house communities in the Comb Ridge area continued to exchange pots and/or ceramic raw materials in the post-Chaco era, but there is evidence for shifting social networks and intensified local production of white ware.

The compositional analysis of hunter-gatherer pottery from the Kuril Islands

“…Over the last few years, examining ceramic artifacts through geochemical analysis has become an increasingly common approach (Ashley et al, 2015;Castanzo, 2014;De La Fuente et al, 2015;Falabella et al, 2013;Glowacki et al, 2015;Grave et al, 2014;Minc et al, 2014;Nunes et al, 2013;Ownby et al, 2014;Peterson, 2015;Rodríguez-Alegría et al, 2013;Sharratt et al, 2015;Stoner et al, 2015Stoner et al, , 2014. However, the increasing popularity of "sourcing" ceramic artifacts has not diminished some inherent concerns about the results, especially when compared to the more traditional analysis of obsidian (Eerkens et al, 2002;Neff, 2000).…”