Ceramic Artifacts Research Articles

A New Approach to Dating the League of the Iroquois

When did the League of the Five Nations Iroquois originate? This study presents a new approach to answering this age-old question. Compositional data were collected on ceramics (pottery and smoking pipes) from Seneca and Mohawk sites in an attempt to identify and reconstruct exchange and interaction patterns between these two widely separated League members. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) spectrometry were employed to collect data on 15 elements. Using pottery as a baseline for each area, pipe data were utilized in a discriminant-function analysis to identify exotic pipes in Seneca assemblages from different time periods. The investigation focused on pipes because they were a probable item of exchange and because the symbolism of pipes and tobacco made smoking an important part of Iroquoian political protocol. Results showed that Mohawk pipes first occurred in Seneca assemblages sometime between A.D. 1590 and A.D. 1605. This is considered likely to reflect the inception of peaceful political relations between these two groups brought about by the final coalescence of the Iroquois Five Nations Confederacy. The approach developed for this study employed nondestructive analytical techniques applied to common classes of ceramic artifacts. As such, the methodology should be broadly applicable to other studies of interaction and exchange in this and other regions.

Technological features of the ‘Cotto Variegato’: a petrological approach

The ‘Cotto Variegato’ are tiles used in Lombardy, between the XVII and XIX centuries as flooring for several historical buildings. Tiles are produced by the processing of two compositionally distinct clays. The main stylistic character of these tiles is a banded texture producing a veined aspect, in which white and red bands are also folded. The artefacts were hand crafted using two clayey raw materials of different composition, that are only partially mixed before the firing. The colour differences are produced during the firing. In all samples white and red portions are always composed of Ca-rich and Ca-poor clay, respectively. The multi-layered texture was obtained by a multiple folding and pressing process of the mixture. The interference of fold limbs with the tile surface gives the ‘variegato’ style to tiles. The paper explains how basic petrological knowledge can be applied to the study of ceramic artefacts in order to define provenance of the raw material, firing technology and how ancient craftsmen transformed the natural clayey materials into floor tiles. The methodological approach is that commonly applied to the study of the rocks and consists of textural analyses, at a different observational scale, combined with X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and microprobe analyses.

Artefatos de gênero na arte do barro: masculinidades e femininidades

Este é um estudo sobre gênero na produção artística de peças de cerâmica em algumas comunidades de artesãos do Vale do Jequitinhonha, Minas Gerais, onde tradicionalmente apenas as mulheres chamadas "paneleiras" praticavam esse ofício, que era transmitido de mãe para filha. Naquela região, assim que a arte do barro se tornou uma fonte alternativa de renda, vários homens decidiram entrar para o ofício. A entrada de homens na arte do barro provocou reconfigurações nas relações de gênero. Um ponto muito importante a ser observado aqui é que apesar de tradicionalmente transmitida por mulheres e pela ação feminina, a arte do barro tem incorporado valores de masculinidade: ao se aproximarem de um ofício tradicionalmente feminino, os homens passaram a retirar dele recursos simbólicos de representação de masculinidade.

Smakkerup Huse: A Mesolithic Settlement in NW Zealand, Denmark

Excavations at the site of Smakkerup Huse on the island of Zealand, Denmark, have revealed Late Mesolithic Ertebølle deposits, dating between 5000 and 3900 B.C. Preservation was excellent and a variety of bone, antler, wood, and other plant remains were recovered in the waterlogged deposits, along with stone and ceramic artifacts. The remains document a diverse subsistence base utilizing both marine and terrestrial foods, an elaborate wood technology, new artifact types, and some of the oldest domestic cows in Scandinavia. This report provides background information on the site, and discusses the artifacts and plant and animal remains. The question of domestic animals in the Late Mesolithic is addressed.

PROVENIENCE INVESTIGATION OF CERAMICS AND OBSIDIAN FROM OTUMBA

Obsidian and ceramic artifacts from the Otumba project were analyzed by instrumental neutron-activation analysis. Sources for the obsidian were determined by comparison to a databank of Central Mexican source analyses. Ceramic sources were determined by comparison to a series of reference groups from the Basin of Mexico and by comparison with raw material samples. Obsidian from the lapidary workshop (Operation 11) comes predominantly from the Otumba and Pachuca sources. There is also an unknown compositional profile present among the artifacts. This profile may derive from a not-yet-sampled flow within one of several nearby obsidian-source areas, such as Otumba or Paredon. The majority of Otumba ceramics fall into a large group derived from clays of the Teotihuacan-valley alluvium. Aztec II Black-on-Orange and red-ware samples come from other sources in the eastern basin. Ceramics from sites along the trade route leading northeast toward Tulancingo include figurines derived from Otumba, figurines probably made locally near Tepeapulco and Tulancingo, and long-handle censers probably made in the latter two locations.

Material Culture and Cultural Meanings: Current Studies of Archaeological Ceramics and in Ce­ramic Ethnoarchaeology

Pottery and People: A Dynamic Interaction. James M. Skibo and Gary M. Feinman (editors). Founda­tions of Archaeological Inquiry. Salt Lake City. University of Utah Press. 1999. 260 pp. 91 figures. 30 tables. ISBN 0-87480-576-7. $55.00 (cloth); 0-87489-577-5. $25.00 (paperback). Material Meanings: Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of Material Culture. Elizabeth S. Chilton (editor). Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 1999.179pp. 35 figures. 11 tables. ISBN 0-87480-632-1. $55.00 (cloth); 087480-633-X. $35.00 (paperback). The description and interpretation of material culture may be regarded as the essence of archaeology, a discipline that seeks to recover, describe, document, and interpret past human culture. More recently, understanding that actions occur in a material world that is constituted symbolically, archaeological explanations are often framed in sociocultural meanings, the analysis of agencies, practices and behaviors. I shall subsequently return to this issue. Because of their longevity in the archaeological record, lithic and ceramic artifacts are crucial to the endeavor to interpret human culture. Objects fashioned from clay and subjected to intentional artificial sources of heat made their initial appearance in the archaeological record more than 26.000 years ago. Ceramic objects have been created in a seemingly endless variety of shapes and forms, varying from fertility figurines. to cooking and food storage vessels. lamps, smoking pipes, medicinal pastilles, tokens, beehives, and coffins to modern whitewares and pyroceramics.

Spatial Analysis of Small Scale Debris from a Late Prehistoric Site in the Lower Missouri Valley, Kansas

Late Prehistoric habitation structures in the Great Plains of North America are frequently recognized from postmold patterns and associated features, such as hearths and storage pits. At sites that lack such indicators, some archaeologists have either failed to discern domestic structures or have mistakenly attributed them to other, non-habitation functions. In the absence of more conventional house remains, the spatial analysis of small scale debris, including daub, charcoal, and burned bone, in conjunction with piece-plotted lithic and ceramic artifacts, can identify the remains of houses as well as external, domestic features. Such analysis enhances our understanding of past settlement patterns of seasonally mobile agriculturalists, as seen at the Steed-Kisker phase component at the DB site (14LV1071), a late prehistoric upland occupation of the Lower Missouri Valley at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The Production of Ceramic Materials in Roman Pavia: An Archaeometric NAA Investigation of Clay Sources and Archaeological Artifacts

Part of a research program on cultural heritage aimed to elucidate the production of ceramic artifacts in Roman Pavia is devoted to the localization of the possible sources of raw materials (claypits) as well as to the technological production processes. Clay samples were collected in two different areas nearby Pavia, Lomellina and Oltrepo. Some of these samples were also fired at 950 °C. Archaeological ceramic samples, mostly bricks and tiles of Roman age, were obtained from excavations of Roman settlings close to Pavia. All samples were submitted to instrumental neutron activation analysis for the determination of Ca, Fe and a number of trace elements. Results indicate (1) fired and raw clay samples keep the same elemental fingerprint so that only raw samples data can be used in archaeometric studies; (2) some parameters based on rare earth elements are useful to discriminate the clay samples from the two investigated areas; (3) clay discrimination is confirmed also by discriminant analysis; and (4) the insertion of the elemental composition data of the ceramic artifacts in the statistical treatment allows one to assign the artifacts to one of the investigated areas and confirms that, at Roman times, the production of ceramic building materials was mostly based on the use of local prime matter.

Alteration and Contamination of Archaeological Ceramics: The Perturbation Problem

Alteration and contamination processes modify the chemical composition of ceramic artefacts. This is not restricted solely to the affected elements, but also affects general concentrations. This is due to the compositional nature of chemical data, enclosed by the restriction of unit sum. Since it is impossible to know prior to data treatment whether the original compositions have been changed by such processes, the methodological approach used in provenance studies must be robust enough to handle materials that might have been altered or contaminated. The ability of the logratio transformation proposed by Aitchinson to handle compositional data is studied and compared with that of present data treatments. The logratio transformation appears to offer the most robust approach.

A COMPARATIVE ELECTRON MICROPROBE STUDY OF LERNA III AND IV CERAMICS AND LOCAL CLAY‐RICH SEDIMENTS*

This study uses electron microprobe analysis of ceramic artefacts and local day‐rich sediments and lithics to help address questions concerning the nature of the cultural change implied by ceramics from Lerna III and IV. It redresses the previous lack of a comparative collection of clay‐rich sediments that adequately represents the local variation in clay and temper for the area surrounding Lerna. The resulting comparisons indicate that although they produced stylistically different ceramics, potters from both Lenta phases acquired their clays from the local Lerna area.

Pottery from the chapel of the colegio-universidad de Santa María de Jesús (Sevilla)

In this paper, a group of more than 300 ceramic artifacts of defective manufacture that are presently in the Real Alcazar of Seville, is described. The coarsewares come from the filling of the voult of the presbitery of the chapel of Santa Maria de Jesus College in the same city. The date of manufacture and setting can be fixed between 1503 and 1506 by means of documentary data allready published. The objects follow 50 different formal patterns from which 30 of them are now published for the first time. This paper might complement other works published in this issue and this makes more valuable the spreading of this data. The typological variety, the possibility to know the chronology of their manufacture —a crucial historic period of Seville and a wide area of influence— its good conditions and its probable local origin, make this group a collection of special archaeological interest although their taking out in the 70's was unfortuna- telly, not carried out with the scientific accuracy that would be necessary nowadays.

Thermoluminescence dating of St. Croix ceramics: Chronology building in Southwestern Nova Scotia

Using the classic thermoluminescence (TL) dating technique for fired ceramic materials, we have obtained the first direct ages for five ceramic artifacts recovered from BfDa-1, a prehistoric archaeological site located in St. Croix, southcentral Nova Scotia. BfDa-1 is the only archaeological site in Nova Scotia to produce the full range of ceramic styles associated with the Woodland or Ceramic Period (c. 1050 B.C. to A.D. 1500); thus our new chronology can be used to revise the current local and regional ceramic chronologies. The five sherds from the St. Croix site yielded absolute gas of 1.15 ± 0.15 ka to 2.62 ± 0.29 ka (1 ka = 1000 years). The oldest of these TL ages was obtained on a sherd decorated with a pseudoscallop shell design and is in excellent agreement with a 14C date of 2500 ± 120 B.P. associated with Early Ceramic artifacts at this site. The other TL ages are in agreement with the relative ceramic chronology deduced from their decorative attributes. All five TL dates are in the correct depth-age order. This demonstrates that the recent excavations explored a part of the site which remained undisturbed in spite of extensive agricultural and horticultural activities in the vicinity in recent centuries. The dates also indicate a high degree of compression for the cultural remains at the site. They suggest a sediment deposition rate of 1.3 cm/100 yr during the early stages of the occupation period (2000–2600 yr B.P.), and a decrease in the deposition rate to 0.5 cm/100 yr during the last 2000 years. These dates provide the first successful application of TL dating to ceramics of the Minas Basin area. They confirm an initial hypothesis based on the stylistic attributes of ceramics recovered from BfDa-1, that human occupation at the site must have been of long duration. The excellent quality of the analytical data indicates that the TL dating technique should be well suited to the study of ceramic technology in other parts of the province, and that local mineralogy is suitable for optical dating of sediments at the site and elsewhere in Nova Scotia. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Identifying Clay Sources of Prehistoric Pottery Using Atomic Spectroscopy

Atomic spectroscopy is applied to the compositional analysis of sherds from pottery produced by the Hohokam about 1150 A.D. near modern day Tucson, Arizona. Analysis of National Institute of Standards and Technology standard reference materials is used to develop the necessary digestion procedures and to demonstrate that atomic absorbance and inductively coupled plasma emission spectroscopies offer a good substitute for neutron activation analysis in the compositional analysis of ceramic artifacts. Accuracy and precision of the determination of major and minor elements are evaluated. Analysis of 16 possible clay sources and 30 sherds suggests that the pottery sherds were from locally produced pottery.

41HSS74, The Coleman Farm Site on Starkey Creek

Recent archaeological research on the Middle Caddoan period in Northeast Texas has made it abundantly clear that Middle Caddoan archaeological sites are much more common in the region than previously thought. Furthermore, with additional archaeological investigations, some radiocarbon dates, and a different perspectives on the regional archaeological record, a number of sites in the Sabine River drainage that used to be considered of Late Caddoan age are now more properly seen to be part of an intensive Middle Caddoan settlement of much of the basin. Truly, a broader and more complete view of the important Middle Caddoan period (ca. A.D. 1200-1400) in Northeast Texas looms before us. With the understanding of the Middle Caddoan period increasing anew through field investigations, as well as the synthetic efforts of the East Texas Caddoan Research Group, and the implications of new archaeological findings (such as the Oak Hill Village excavation) a further motivation for new archaeological research, documenting other Middle Caddoan sites remains important. That is the goal of this paper, namely to document an assemblage of lithic and ceramic artifacts from a late Middle Caddoan period component at the Coleman Farm site (41HS574) in Harrison County, Texas. The archaeological materials reported on here are from a surface collection made by Marshall Macintosh at the site in late 1994.

The Explanation of Artifact Variability

We furnish a theoretical framework for explaining that portion of formal variability in artifacts attributable to the behavior of the artisan. Major causal factors are the artisan's knowledge and experience, extent of feedback on performance in activities along the artifact's behavioral chain, situational factors in behavioral chain activities, technological constraints, and social processes of conflict and negotiation. In identifying the causal factors at work in a specific case, the investigator must focus analytically on activities-that is, on people-people, people-artifact, and artifact-artifact interactions-and on the performance characteristics relevant to each. Application of this behavioral framework allows abandonment of many cherished but unhelpful concepts, including style and function. Ceramic artifacts, the low-fired, clay cooking pot in particular, are employed for illustrative purposes.

Some Observations on Four Probable Middle Caddo Period Cemeteries in Camp and Upshur Counties, Northeast Texas

In this paper, I discuss probable Middle Caddo period ceramic vessels and other artifacts from cemeteries at the Rumsey (41CP3), Harold Williams (41CP10), Graydon Adkins #1 (41UR21), and Graydon Adkins#2 (41UR17) sites in Camp and Upshur counties.

Analyses of Archaeological Ceramics From Classic Period Teotihuacan, Mexico, A.D. 150–750

ABSTRACTFrom ca. A.D. 150–750 Classic period civilization in Central Mexico was dominated by the city-state of Teotihuacan, a metropolis of at least 125,000 inhabitants located in a northeastern valley of the Basin of Mexico. This polity exercised economic and religious control over a wide area, regulated obsidian tool resources and production, and locally fabricated and also imported a variety of ceramic artifacts. In this report I shall summarize the status of current and ongoing investigations of Classic Teotihuacan period archaeological ceramics by surveying briefly the regional geology, reviewing previous research employing petrography and INAA, and examining the salient results of the analyses to date on two foreign and seven domestic ceramic wares. Lastly, I consider important research problems and suggest cautions for future investigations of ceramics and clay sources.

Provenance Determination from ICP-MS Elemental and Isotopic Compositions of El Paso Area Ceramics

ABSTRACTTo evaluate the performance of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) in determining ceramic provenance, we analyzed 60 elements in 30 ceramic artifacts from six a priori groups from west Texas-southwestern New Mexico. Discriminant function analysis of the ICP-MS elemental data classified all members of the six a priori groups without error. In repeated analyses using 80% of the data as a training set, overall 75% of the withheld specimens were properly classified. Lead isotope ratios, also measured on the ICP-MS, provided an independent partial discrimination between the groups. The results of this study demonstrate that ICP-MS provides multi-element and lead isotopie characterization of archaeological ceramics suitable for provenance determination. ICP-MS is a rapid, in-house, and relatively inexpensive technology and thus is a reasonable alternative to neutron activation analysis (NAA) for compositional studies of archaeological ceramics.

Textured joints for conductors and complex shaped components using the composite reaction texturing method

A new technique for forming textured high critical current joints between superconducting ceramic artefacts is presented. The method uses composite reaction texturing (CRT). For the Bi/sub 2/Sr/sub 2/Ca/sub 1/Cu/sub 2/O/sub x/ (Bi-2212) system, a Bi-2212 preform is seeded with specifically aligned MgO whiskers which determine the texture in the joint region during a subsequent reaction treatment that involves partial melting. The technique can be used to join green or previously reacted components and if binders are used polymer joining techniques can be exploited. Samples retain their shape for repeated partial melting. Although it is also possible to join previously reacted components by use of a lower melting point Bi-2212 compound (e.g. Li doped). The quality of joints was assessed by transport measurements on joined bars and magnetisation measurements on cylinders formed from polymer processed sheet. It was found that the joint region carried as large a critical current as non-joint sections. For the rare earth system, RBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub x/ (R-123), a variation of the above technique can be used to form joints. >

X-ray Microtomography of Ceramic Artifacts

In this paper we describe the analysis of ceramic artifacts with a new type of three dimensional x-ray microscopy which can have micron spatial resolution. The x-ray microscopy is based on a microtomographic technique which reconstructs the three dimensional structure of millimeter sized specimens from high resolution digital radiographs of the specimenstaken from several hundred different view angles. When the high resolution radiographs are taken with a monoenergetic x-ray beam from a synchrotron source, each volume element (voxel) in the reconstructed data set is quantitatively the x-ray opacity of the equivalentvolume in the specimen. Typical reconstructed data sets contain more than 10 6 voxels and are rendered using computer visualization techniques. Specimens can be nondestructively analyzed so long as they are small enough to fit into the area of the x-ray beam imaged by the detector. We have applied x-ray microtomographic analysis both to a shardspecimen taken from a Jun bowl and to a modern ash glaze and show examples of the structure of glazes on these ceramics; interfaces between the glaze and underlying ceramic bodies; and the porosity of ceramic bodies.