An X-ray fluorescence-pattern recognition analysis of pottery from an early historic hispanic settlement near Santa Fe, New Mexico

Abstract

The results from a cluster analysis of x-ray fluorescence data on pottery sherds from a rare 17th-century Spanish colonial site are used to make a preliminary identification of the Pueblo origins of these ceramics and to examine the socio-economic interactions between the colonists and the indigenous Pueblo Indians. This work not only provides a needed data base on elemental compositions of Pueblo pottery in the area just to the south of Santa Fe, it also demonstrates that the nearest pueblo was not necessarily the only or even the major source of the pottery present at such sites. Several cultural factors in 17th-century Spanish colonial New Mexico—the tribute (encomienda) system, class, status, and gender—are briefly considered for the role they may have played in determining the distribution of pottery sources found at the site, LA 20,000.