The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community

The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community
Author: Dean E. Arnold
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2015-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607323141

In The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community, Dean E. Arnold continues his unique approach to ceramic ethnoarchaeology, tracing the history of potters in Ticul, Yucatán, and their production space over a period of more than four decades. This follow-up to his 2008 work Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution uses narrative to trace the changes in production personnel and their spatial organization through the changes in production organization in Ticul. Although several kinds of production units developed, households were the most persistent units of production in spite of massive social change and the reorientation of pottery production to the tourist market. Entrepreneurial workshops, government-sponsored workshops, and workshops attached to tourist hotels developed more recently but were short-lived, whereas pottery-making households extended deep into the nineteenth century. Through this continuity and change, intermittent crafting, multi-crafting, and potters' increased management of economic risk also factored into the development of the production organization in Ticul. Illustrated with more than 100 images of production units, The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community is an important contribution to the understanding of ceramic production. Scholars with interests in craft specialization, craft production, and demography, as well as specialists in Mesoamerican archaeology, anthropology, history, and economy, will find this volume especially useful.

Tarascan Pottery Production in Michoacán, Mexico

Tarascan Pottery Production in Michoacán, Mexico
Author: Eduardo Williams
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2017-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784916749

This book examines a contemporary pottery tradition in Mesoamerica, but also looks back to the earliest examples of cultural development in this area. By means of ethnographic analogy and ceramic ecology, this study seeks to shed light on a modern indigenous community and on the theory, method and practice of ethnoarchaeology.

Pots, Pans, and People: Material Culture and Nature in Mesoamerican Ceramics

Pots, Pans, and People: Material Culture and Nature in Mesoamerican Ceramics
Author: Eduardo Williams
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2024-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1803278102

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.

Ceramics of Ancient America

Ceramics of Ancient America
Author: Yumi Park Huntington
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-09-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813052416

This is the first volume to bring together archaeology, anthropology, and art history in the analysis of pre-Columbian pottery. While previous research on ceramic artifacts has been divided by these three disciplines, this volume shows how integrating these approaches provides new understandings of many different aspects of Ancient American societies. Contributors from a variety of backgrounds in these fields explore what ceramics can reveal about ancient social dynamics, trade, ritual, politics, innovation, iconography, and regional styles. Essays identify supernatural and humanistic beliefs through formal analysis of Lower Mississippi Valley "Great Serpent" effigy vessels and Ecuadorian depictions of the human figure. They discuss the cultural identity conveyed by imagery such as Andean head motifs, and they analyze symmetry in designs from locations including the American Southwest. Chapters also take diachronic approaches—methods that track change over time—to ceramics from Mexico’s Tarascan State and the Valley of Oaxaca, as well as from Maya and Toltec societies. This volume provides a much-needed multidisciplinary synthesis of current scholarship on Ancient American ceramics. It is a model of how different research perspectives can together illuminate the relationship between these material artifacts and their broader human culture. Contributors: | Dean Arnold | George J. Bey III | Michael Carrasco | David Dye | James Farmer | Gary Feinman | Amy Hirshman | Yumi Park Huntington | Johanna Minich | Shelia Pozorski and Thomas Pozorski | Jeff Price | Sarahh Scher | Dorothy Washburn | Robert F. Wald

Maya Potters' Indigenous Knowledge

Maya Potters' Indigenous Knowledge
Author: Dean E. Arnold
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-02-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607326566

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.

Innovative Approaches and Explorations in Ceramic Studies

Innovative Approaches and Explorations in Ceramic Studies
Author: Sandra L. López Varela
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2017-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784917370

This book celebrates thirty years of Ceramic Ecology, an international symposium initiated at the 1986 American Anthropological Association. Contributions explore the application of instrumental techniques and experimental studies to analyze ceramics and follow innovative approaches to evaluate methods and theories.

The Value of Things

The Value of Things
Author: Jennifer P. Mathews
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2017-04-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816536325

Jade, stone tools, honey and wax, ceramics, rum, land. What gave these commodities value in the Maya world, and how were those values determined? What factors influenced the rise and fall of a commodity’s value? The Value of Things examines the social and ritual value of commodities in Mesoamerica, providing a new and dynamic temporal view of the roles of trade of commodities and elite goods from the prehistoric Maya to the present. Editors Jennifer P. Mathews and Thomas H. Guderjan begin the volume with a review of the theoretical literature related to the “value of things.” Throughout the volume, well-known scholars offer chapters that examine the value of specific commodities in a broad time frame—from prehistoric, colonial, and historic times to the present. Using cases from the Maya world on both the local level and the macro-regional, contributors look at jade, agricultural products (ancient and contemporary), stone tools, salt, cacao (chocolate), honey and wax, henequen, sugarcane and rum, land, ceramic (ancient and contemporary), and contemporary tourist handicrafts. Each chapter author looks into what made their specific commodity valuable to ancient, historic, and contemporary peoples in the Maya region. Often a commodity’s worth goes far beyond its financial value; indeed, in some cases, it may not even be viewed as something that can be sold. Other themes include the rise and fall in commodity values based on perceived need, rarity or overproduction, and change in available raw materials; the domestic labor side of commodities, including daily life of the laborers; and relationships between elites and nonelites in production. Examining, explaining, and theorizing how people ascribe value to what they trade, this scholarly volume provides a rich look at local and regional Maya case studies through centuries of time. Contributors: Rani T. Alexander Dean E. Arnold Timothy Beach Briana Bianco Steven Bozarth Tiffany C. Cain Scott L. Fedick Thomas H. Guderjan John Gust Eleanor Harrison-Buck Brigitte Kovacevich Samantha Krause Joshua J. Kwoka Richard M. Leventhal Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach Jennifer P. Mathews Heather McKillop Allan D. Meyers Gary Rayson Mary Katherine Scott E. Cory Sills

Technology and Tradition in Mesoamerica After the Spanish Invasion

Technology and Tradition in Mesoamerica After the Spanish Invasion
Author: Rani T. Alexander
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2019
Genre: Central America
ISBN: 0826360157

This impressive collection features the work of archaeologists who systematically explore the material and social consequences of new technological systems introduced after the sixteenth-century Spanish invasion in Mesoamerica. It is the first collection to present case studies that show how both commonplace and capital-intensive technologies were intertwined with indigenous knowledge systems to reshape local, regional, and transoceanic ecologies, commodity chains, and political, social, and religious institutions across Mexico and Central America.

Cultural Dynamics and Production Activities in Ancient Western Mexico

Cultural Dynamics and Production Activities in Ancient Western Mexico
Author: Eduardo Williams
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784913561

This book presents a collection of papers from the Symposium on Cultural Dynamics and Production Activities in Ancient Western Mexico, held at the Center for Archaeological Research of the Colegio de Michoacán on September 18-19, 2014.

Connectivity, Imperialism, and the Han Iron Industry

Connectivity, Imperialism, and the Han Iron Industry
Author: Wengcheong Lam
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2022-08-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000627209

This book examines the rise of the iron industry during the Warring States and Western Han periods (ca. 400 BCE–9 CE) in ancient China, which is characterized not only by various technological innovations but also as a remarkable phenomenon, leading to the widespread distribution of iron implements and the emergence of massive ironworks that were rarely seen in later periods. With Connectivity, Imperialism, and the Han Iron Industry, Lam Wengcheong combines archaeological and historical analyses to piece together fragmentary evidence and to refocus our gaze onto the economic and political mechanism that gave birth to an iron industry unique in the ancient world. Guiding readers through the macroscopic social settings of the iron industry and distribution patterns of iron implements to the microscopic organization of workplace and workers’ foodways, Lam explores how iron production and transportation processes intersected with the transformation of the Han capital region in the Guanzhong basin. Using various lines of evidence of iron production in Guanzhong and its connection with other production centers, this book shows how the production and transportation of iron at various scales played a significant role in generating the "connectivity" between various parts of the Western Han empire, and casts new light on the workings of the economic system in imperial China. Connectivity, Imperialism, and the Han Iron Industry will appeal to anyone interested in Chinese archaeology, the history of the Han empire, and the history of science and engineering in ancient China, as well as to scholars working on the comparative study of ancient imperialism, market exchange, and economic history.