Pottery Vessel Function and Foodways at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba

Abstract

Our approach assumes that pots are tools, containers whose performance characteristics are adjusted to their primary uses. Traditional agricultural peoples generally distinguish among multiple vessel shapes that have distinct intended uses. In this article, we present afunctional analysis of vessel shapes and sizes performed on a sample of 160 rim sherds from the site of El Chorro de Malta, Cuba. These were assigned to 13 defined vessel shapes, most of which displayed more than one size mode based on estimated orifice diameters. The majority of specimens from El Chorro de Malta are low-profile, composite-contour bowls made in medium and large size modes, followed in frequency by simple-contour bowls and plates. Late Ceramic Age peoples in the Greater Antilles are historically documented as participating in the manioc breadcake-cassareep- stewpot foodway common to much of the tropical lowlands of northern South America. Consequently, it should be possible to show how the container assemblage of El Chorro de Malta is adapted to the requirements of that foodway. We note that, ethnographically, the elaborate processing of bitter manioc itself to produce breadcakes as a staple food does not necessarily require pottery vessels at all. Nonetheless, common stewing as a key component of the foodway—including the production of the condiment called cassareep in the Guianas—can require several containers with potentially distinct performance requirements: one to collect the juice below the sleeve press, another to reduce the expressed juice to the thickened sauce over afire, and a third, the stewpot itself, adapted to simmering vegetable and meat stews. We provisionally suggest that some of the most common shape-size classes at El Chorro de Malta are suited to producing and serving stews and cassareep, the traditional complement to eating manioc breadcake.