Orange Ware production and exchange in formative central Mexico as an index of regionalization of pottery styles

Abstract

Ceramics present archaeologists with a medium to explore the range and intensity of interactions across space and over time. Style associations between regions indicate, at a minimum, communication, trade, or possibly migration coupled with an open disposition with respect to social identity formation. Conversely, style boundaries may develop for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to geographically restricted levels of interaction and more insular attitudes towards outgroups. Gordon Willey (1991) drew these alternatives into a cyclical model, shifting between broad style horizons and regionalized traditions. Early Mesoamerican style horizons as expressed through ceramics developed along broad networks of open cultural exchanges during the Early and Middle Formative periods. By the Late Formative, however, Mesoamerica fragmented into distinctive regionalized ceramic traditions. We provide a small-scale view of this process at the end of the Middle Formative using compositional sourcing to identify a divergence in the ceramic traditions of two neighboring regions: the Basin of Mexico and Morelos. During this timeframe, groups across lowland Mesoamerica developed an Orange Ware tradition that extended into Morelos. As revealed through neutron activation analysis (NAA) and petrography, the majority of orange/yellow Lacquer Ware found in the Basin of Mexico was imported from Morelos during the late Middle Formative, but Basin potters never adopted Orange Wares into their own style repertoires. The Morelos Orange Ware tradition is the first ceramic style in a long history of interaction between the two regions that was not matched by parallel developments in both regions, thus serving as a reference to an inflection point in the cycling between horizontal integration and regional differentiation that Willey hypothesized. This process continued into the Late Formative when Basin groups realigned with groups to the northwest through the adoption of Chupícuaro ceramic traits.