Material Symbolics in Pre-Columbian Households: The Painted Pottery of Naco, Honduras

Abstract

This is a cultural and historical study of Nolasco Bichrome, a nonelite ceramic type characteristic of northwestern Honduras just prior to Spanish conquest. Stylistic and contextual considerations suggest the pottery conveyed to its users a complex mosaic of meaning, to which design, form, function, and proximate social setting all contributed. Nolasco Bichrome apparently originated in circumstances of social disruption as a reformulation of a local tradition that anciently assigned a similar congeries of signification to painted, domestic pottery. This analysis illustrates how some quotidian artifacts may offer a largely unsuspected and untapped resource for the study of nonelite cognitive systems in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. It indicates, more generally, the kind of information archaeologists can elicit from material symbolics in prehistory.