Defining Material Correlates for Ceramic Circulation in the Prehistoric Puebloan Southwest

Obsidian procurement, least cost path analysis, and social interaction in the Mimbres area of southwestern New Mexico

“…Mathematical models that sought to differentiate mechanisms of exchange (Hodder, 1974;Renfrew, 1975) appeared promising but have largely been abandoned with the recognition that similar distributions of goods can be produced by a variety of processes (Bradley and Edmonds, 2005:5-11;Clark, 2006;Earle, 1999). Further, models of exchange rarely account for other potential reasons for the movement of goods, like household mobility (Whittlesey, 2004;Zedeñ o, 1998). In place of such models, researchers have returned to ethnographic analogy as one means of building models to begin investigating the processes of distribution within past societies (Clark and Perry, 1990;Taliaferro, 2004a:120-127).…”