Abstract
Discontinuity plays an important role in the social and material world of Aguabuena potters, a small rural community in the Colombian Andes. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the changes in modes of production and gender division of work during the last decades of the twentieth century and the fractures in space, memory, and materiality to address discontinuities in ceramic production. The wheel and its transformations are taken as an important factor of these processes. Against the common trend in the archaeology of Colombia to see pottery-making as a static craft, rooted in an indigenous past, this article aims to revisit ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic data to argue how cracks and gaps, besides empirical facts, can be seen as complex analytical lenses through which to embrace ruptures and less linear narratives.
Highlights
Drawing on longterm ethnographic research in Aguabuena, a small closeknit, Spanish-speaking rural community of potters in the Colombian Andes, I address changes observed among Aguabuena potters during the past two decades to reconsider the social and material dynamics inside ceramic workshops at a local scale and the presence of the potters’ wheel in these processes
I focus on social transformations within the Aguabuena community and territory, technological changes in the ceramic manufacturing process, and surfaces constructed and maintained with ceramic sherds
My interest in the relationships between material culture and people guided me through participantobservation of the social life of pots and potters, looking at the various dynamics transcending the manufacturing process of pots
Summary
This article explores discontinuity as an analytical lens to revisit our studies on pottery-making. Data collected in Ráquira and surroundings empirically proved the coexistence of different pottery manufacturing techniques in archaeological and ethnographic materials (like coiling and modelling) and the use of rudimentary wheels as part of the ceramic technology employed in colonial ceramic contexts with reference to other ethnographic contexts in different regions and among different indigenous groups in Colombia (Therrien, 1990, pp.40–41) Despite this evidence, archaeologists still pursue “pure” categories of fixed boundaries between what is indigenous and what is not, with little interest towards hybridisations and forms of mestizaje visible through ceramic technology. Indigenous populations), an idea which goes against more essentialist portrayals of current pottery-making as the survival of indigenous traditions
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