Making and Breaking Pots in a Late Prehistoric Village in the Midwest United States

Abstract

This article presents pottery manufacturing data from the SunWatch site, a late prehistoric village in the Midwest United States. The SunWatch pottery assemblage is suitable for such a study as the sherds have been refitted to a large degree, resulting in numerous complete profiles that maximize data that can be derived regarding manufacture. Additionally, previous research has shown that this village was occupied once or few brief times when pottery vessel diversity was minimal and villages were not very large or complex in the region. There are two key results of the study. First, the assemblage is surprisingly homogenous in vessel form, particularly jars, with nearly perfect correlations between rim diameter and other vessel size measurements. This finding should prove to be useful for others to augment more fragmentary assemblages where overall vessel sizes are often rarely obtainable. Second, the breakage pattern, when compared to ethnographic data from comparable contexts, refines previous understanding of village occupation duration.