Tag: Archaeology

This is an early pre-review version of a article published in American Antiquity and available here 

  Time and Population from the Surface at San Marcos Pueblo (LA98), North Central New Mexico

Ann F. Ramenofsky

University of New Mexico

Christopher Pierce

Web Data Works

Unpublished manuscript

DRAFT: Do not cite without permission of the authors 

Understanding the effects of European contact on the organization, size, and mobility of Pueblo populations in the Southwest requires detailed knowledge of the occupational histories of the large, aggregated settlements that typify the late prehistoric and early historic record. Unfortunately, such understanding is generally lacking because the methods used to document occupational histories of settlements tend to either obscure fine-grained temporal distinctions or necessitate costly and politically objectionable large-scale excavations. To overcome these difficulties, we analyze the surface record at San Marcos Pueblo (LA98), a large, late site in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico, in an attempt to reconstruct the occupational and population history of the settlement. Using detailed mapping, systematic surface collections, and multiple seriations of midden deposits, we document several alternating periods of occupation and abandonment of the pueblo with population size varying from one occupation to the next. This reconstruction challenges conventional wisdom regarding the occupational history of these late, large settlements as representing deep sedentism with population decline and abandonment occurring only after Spanish contact.

The Development of Corrugated Pottery in Southwestern Colorado

Christopher Pierce 

Archaeological research has documented the broad outlines of the development of corrugated utility pottery from plain and neck-banded anteceedents. However, a reliance on typological descriptions has obscured the technological details of this development. An attribute analysis of six well-dated utility-ware assemblages from southwestern Colorado indicates that corrugation appeared first in this region during the eigth century A.D. as wide, non-overlapping coils left unsmoothed around jar necks. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the variety and frequency of neck-banding increased with the introduction of narrower coils, overlapping of adjacent coils, and incising and indenting of coil surfaces. By the early eleventh century, one recent neck-banding variant, narrow, substantially overlapped and indented coils, replaced almost all others, and was extended over the entire exterior surface of jars for the first time. Performance benefits of this full-body, indented corrugation may explain its rapid adoption in southwestern Colorado.

An edited version of this paper has been published as:

Pierce, C.
2005 The Development of Corrugated Pottery in Southwestern Colorado. Kiva 71: 79-100.

Download a PDF reprint of the published version of this article.

 Reverse Engineering the Ceramic Cooking Pot: Cost and Performance Properties of Plain and Textured Vessels

Christopher Pierce 

Ceramic cooking pots throughout the world vary in exterior surface treatment from smooth to roughly textured. An intriguing example of this variation occurred in the Puebloan region of the southwestern United States where cooking pots changed from scraped plain to highly textured, corrugated vessels between the seventh and eleventh centuries AD, and then reverted back to plain-surfaced by the fifteenth century. To investigate potential cost and performance differences between plain and corrugated cooking pots, a set of controlled experiments were performed, which document manufacturing costs, cooking effectiveness, and vessel durability. These experiments indicate that while corrugation may have increased manufacturing costs, neck corrugations improved vessel handling, upper body corrugations yielded greater control over cooking, and basal corrugations extended vessel use-life. Discerning the explanatory significance of these results for cooking pot change in the Southwest and elsewhere requires additional data on the contexts in which these pots were made and used.

Published as:

Reverse engineering the ceramic cooking pot: Cost and performance properties of plain and textured vessels. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 117-157, June, 2005.

Download a PDF reprint of the published version of this paper.

Measuring Community Interaction: Pueblo III Pottery Production and Distribution in the Central Mesa Verde Region

Christopher Pierce, Donna M. Glowacki and Margaret M. Thurs

The scale, intensity, and character of interaction among Pueblo people during the 13th century A.D. likely played an important role in the processes and events leading to the abandonment of the Northern San Juan region in the 1280s. Characteristics of pottery production and distribution in the Sand Canyon locality provide one means of investigating these interactions. Variation among Pueblo III settlements in the use of temper and available raw clay sources, and the distribution of pottery production tools demonstrate the existence of at least two production areas within the locality. The nature of the boundary between these production areas indicates a complex pattern of settlement and community interaction that challenges models based on settlement proximity. Further, an almost complete lack of extra-regional pottery at Pueblo III settlements suggests that the Northern San Juan region may have been economically isolated from other regions inhabited by Pueblo people.

An edited version of this paper was publiahsed as:

Pierce, C., D. M. Glowacki, and M. M. Thurs
2002 Measuring Community Interaction: Pueblo III Pottery Production and Distribution in the Central Mesa Verde Region. In Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Community in the Mesa Verde Region, edited by M.D. Varien and R. Wilshusen, pp. 185-202. The University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

The History of Attempts to Explain Southwestern Corrugated Pottery

Christopher Pierce

Southwestern corrugated pottery consists mainly of utilitarian or culinary jars displaying distinctively textured exterior surfaces, but lacking slip and paint. The textured surface was produced by not obliterating or smoothing the thin coils or ropes of clay used to construct the vessels creating a horizontally ridged appearance, hence the name corrugated. From the late tenth through early thirteenth centuries AD,ancestors of the modern Pueblo people across most of the northern part of the American Southwest (Figure 1) adopted a variety of corrugated pottery referred to as all-over, or full-body indented corrugated. This form of corrugation has systematically pinched or indented coils left exposed over the entire exterior surface of the vessel. Precursors to full-body corrugation had unindented exposed coils restricted to the neck portions of the jars, and are referred to as neck-banded pottery. Earlier still, culinary vessels had entirely plain surfaces produced by scraping both interior and exterior surfaces until the coils or other construction elements were completely obliterated (Figure 2). The all-over indented corrugated technology continued until the fifteenth century when Pueblo potters returned to plain-surfaced cooking pots.

The Production and Use of Puebloan Utility Ware Pottery

Christopher Pierce

Understanding the production and use of ancient plain and corrugated pottery provides crucial information on how the pottery interacted with different aspects of its environment during the development and spread of corrugation technology. By production, I refer to the conditions under which the manufacture of utility wares took place. These conditions include how potters learned their craft, technologies involved in the manufacture of utility wares, and aspects of the organization of utility ware production. In documenting the use of utility wares, I am concerned with the kinds and intensity of uses in which the manufactured vessels were employed.

The Spread of Corrugation Technology in the American Southwest

Christopher Pierce

Documenting the spread of corrugation technology on the basis of published information is a formidable undertaking. Given that one must rely, for the most part, on pottery type data from diverse regions of the Southwest, two hurdles present themselves. The first has to do with dating. Ideally, one reconstructs the spread of corrugation based on independent, absolute dates of the earliest appearance of a particular corrugation type, or technique, in different areas of the Southwest. However, many areas of the Southwest lack adequately dated pottery assemblages that span the entire sequence of changes. Consequently, the beginning and ending dates for many pottery types are based on cross dating with other regions. While often useful for general chronological purposes, cross dating can introduce problems when one is trying to determine if a particular kind of pottery is slightly earlier or later in one region than another. The second hurdle involves the use of numerous different typological schemes across the Southwest. Pottery type names and descriptions can vary considerable from one region to another making it difficult, in some cases, to be sure that one is dealing with the same technology. Utility wares have not generally been accorded the kind of intense scrutiny often given to painted pottery in the Southwest. This lack of attention means that many dating and typological discrepancies and subtleties have gone unexamined or undocumented. As a result of these issues, the reconstruction of the spread of corrugation across the Southwest I present here should be considered tentative, and subject to alteration as new data come to light and more thorough evaluations of existing data are conducted.

Proposal to Conduct Archaeological Research at San Marcos Pueblo (LA98) by the University of New Mexico

Ann F. Ramenofsky and Christopher Pierce 

In 1997, The Archaeological Conservancy and Dr. Ann Ramenofsky began discussions regarding the potential for long-term, significant research at San Marcos Pueblo (LA98). The site, located on a 60 acre Conservancy preserve adjacent to New Mexico State Highway 14 in the Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe, is among the largest ancestral Puebloan ruins in the American Southwest. The property contains the remains of numerous Pueblo structures, estimated to have between 3,000 and 5,000 rooms, and a seventeenth century Franciscan mission complex. During brief field sessions in 1997 and 1998, a team from the University of New Mexico (UNM), under the direction of Dr. Ramenofsky and Christopher Pierce, conducted a surface-mapping program at San Marcos Pueblo. The goal of this work was to produce a modern, detailed map of the Pueblo and Spanish Mission areas of the site, which could provided a basis for future research. In addition, we began compiling information on previous archaeological research at the site. These previous studies include excavations by Nels C. Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History in 1912 and 1915 (Nelson 1914, 1916), test excavations by Erik Reid in the 1950s (Reed 1954), surface collections and test excavations by Winifred Creamer and Jonathan Haas in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Creamer and Haas 1988; Haas 1997; Haas and Creamer 1992), and aerial photo interpretation of the site and surface examinations by a group from the University of Colorado in the early 1990s (Eddy et al. 1996; Welker 1997; Welker and Carr 1995).

A Summary Report on Archaeological Mapping at Pueblo San Marcos (LA98), 1997 & 1998

 Ann F. Ramenofsky and Christopher Pierce

In 1996, Dr. Ann Ramenofsky and Chris Pierce began discussions with the Archaeological Conservancy regarding the potential for long-term, significant research at San Marcos Pueblo (LA98). The site is located on a 60-acre Conservancy preserve adjacent to New Mexico State Highway 14 in the Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe.  At the time, the Conservancy was in the process of acquiring the entire parcel that included numerous room blocks and a mission-complex. Given the integrity of the site, the tourism potential, and the importance of the site for understanding a significant part of Rio Grande prehistory and history to the Pueblo Revolt, the Conservancy was interested and supportive of sustained archaeological field work at San Marcos.

Science and Explanation in Archaeology: A Response to the Post-Processual Critique

Christopher Pierce

The goal of scientific explanation has proven to be a significant challenge in archaeology as well as other social sciences. During the rise of the "New Archaeology" in the 1960s, there was great optimism that archaeology could become a true science simply by adopting the methods of science, in particular the explicit formulation and testing of hypotheses (e.g., Watson et al. 1971). However, this optimism has waned considerably as archaeologists have come to recognize that scientific explanation requires far more than borrowing rituals and concepts from other well-established sciences. Currently, little agreement exists among archaeologists regarding the particular theories and methods that are most suitable for generating valid, accurate and useful scientific explanations, and numerous different approaches vie for acceptance (Cordell 1994; Trigger 1989).