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Anthropology

Faculty Publications

Ceramics

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Heads Or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces From Colonial California, Lee M. Panich, Emilie Lederer, Ryan Phillip, Emily Dylla Aug 2017

Heads Or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces From Colonial California, Lee M. Panich, Emilie Lederer, Ryan Phillip, Emily Dylla

Faculty Publications

Modified ceramic disks have been recovered from historic-era sites across the Americas. Small unperforated disks are commonly interpreted as gaming pieces and larger perforated disks are often classified as spindle whorls. Here, we examine these interpretations in light of collections from three colonial-era sites in central California: Mission San Antonio de Padua, Mission San José, and the Rancho San Andrés Castro Adobe. We argue that the small unperforated disks from our study sites were two-sided dice. These gaming pieces facilitated the social cohesion of Native people living in the large, multiethnic Indigenous communities that formed around Spanish colonial missions and …


Abajo Red-On-Orange And Early Pueblo I Cultural Diversity In The Northern San Juan Region, James R. Allison Jan 2008

Abajo Red-On-Orange And Early Pueblo I Cultural Diversity In The Northern San Juan Region, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

During the early Pueblo I period, between A.D. 750 and 800, the first aggregated villages formed in what are now southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado. At the same time, a new ceramic type, Abajo Red-on-orange, appeared and became the predominant decorated ceramic type at some early villages. Both the technology and the highly variable designs of Abajo Red-on-orange were unprecedented in local ceramics, suggesting the involvement of immigrant potters, a period of unusual innovation, or both. This paper documents the technology, distribution, and designs of Abajo Red-on-orange and what they suggest about early Pueblo I cultural diversity.


Early Pueblo I Ceramic Variability And Cultural Diversity, Janet Hagopian, James R. Allison Jan 2007

Early Pueblo I Ceramic Variability And Cultural Diversity, Janet Hagopian, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

Early Pueblo I ceramics are predominately undecorated gray utility ware with much smaller amounts of painted white ware and red ware. Although many archaeologists have emphasized the lack of variability in Pueblo I ceramic assemblages, close examination of Animas-La Plata Project assemblages reveals significant variation in clays, temper materials, and vessel shape and size. At a larger scale, at least three distinct early Pueblo I ceramic traditions can be defined across the northern San Juan region. This paper examines ceramic variability among Animas-La Plata sites and relates it to cultural diversity within the project area and in the broader region.


Craft Specialization And Exchange Among The Virgin Anasazi, James R. Allison Jan 1992

Craft Specialization And Exchange Among The Virgin Anasazi, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

A large proportion of the culinary ceramics found on 11th century Anasazi sites in the Moapa Valley of Nevada were manufactured more that fifty miles to the east, in northwestern Arizona. This paper uses analyses of ceramics from sites in southeastern Nevada, northwestern Arizona, and southwestern Utah to more precisely define the regional distribution of these ceramics and to assess their degree of standardization in form and technology. Questions relating to the development of community specialization and interaction in egalitarian societies are--examined in light of these analyses.