Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 7, No.

4, 2000

Does the Standardization of Ceramic Pastes Really Mean Specialization?

Dean E. Arnold1

In the literature dealing with the development of ceramic specialization, paste uniformity has been suggested as a surrogate index of product standardization and the result of a more intensive level of specialization. More recently, the amount of paste variability has been seen as an indicator of different types of production organization. Ethnoarchaeological data from Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala suggest that a variety of environmental, technological, and social factors inuence paste variability. These factors are important in all production contexts and complicate inferences drawn about production organization in antiquity. As a consequence, social and economic inferences derived from ancient ceramic pastes need to be understood in relation to numerous other factors such as natural variability of the ceramic raw materials, their procurement, and their use in paste preparation. Furthermore, changes in resource use and paste preparation over time can obscure intracommunity and other ne-scale patterns. As a consequence, it is argued that little, if anything, can be learned about the organization of production below the level of the local production community. Rather, the primary usefulness of paste compositional analyses lies in the identication, in geographic and geological spaces (community signature units), of source communities that exploit raw materials within a limited range of probably no more than 3 to 4 km. Paste analyses thus provide important information about the organization of ceramic distribution, revealing the emergence and demise of source communities and the movement of their ceramic products.
KEY WORDS: ceramic paste; neutron activation analysis; Mexico; Guatemala; Peru; specialization; standardization.

1 Department

of SociologyAnthropology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois 60187; e-mail: Dean. E.Arnold@wheaton.edu. 333
1072-5369/00/1200-0333$18.00/0
C

2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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INTRODUCTION During the last 20 years, many archaeologists have turned their attention to the development of specialized pottery production. As one of the most fundamental processes in the evolution of economic and political complexity, the development of specialization has been the focus of a number of studies that have suggested how changes in production organization might be identied in antiquity (Blackman et al., 1993; Brumel and Earle, 1987; Costin, 1991; Mills and Crown, 1995; Peacock, 1982; Pool, 1992; Rice, 1981, 1991; Van der Leeuw, 1976). Since the initial focus on specialization, however, Rice (1981, 1991) has cautioned that the link between specialization and the attributes of pottery is a very speculative hypothesis that requires unique ethnoarchaeological testing. Costin (1991) has also urged caution in interpreting production organization from pottery attributes, provided a comprehensive framework for thinking about the different types of specialization and production organization, and argued that production organization should not be reconstructed from a single measure. Although some ethnographic testing of dimensional standardization has occurred (Arnold, 1991; Arnold and Nieves, 1992; Longacre, 1999; Longacre et al., 1988; Stark, 1995), and archaeologists have developed models of production organization using the indirect evidence of ceramic pastes (e.g., Mills and Crown, 1995), there has been little ethnographic testing of the propositions linking specialization with the standardization of ceramic pastes. Unfortunately, the link between specialization and archaeological index criteria, such as paste standardization, remains highly speculative. Paste standardization has been related hypothetically to three potential transitions in the establishment and development of specialized pottery production (Rice, 1981, 1991; Costin, 1991). By denition, the initial transition from nonspecialized to specialized production occurs when potters rst begin producing pots for distribution outside of their own households. Second, increased skill and routinization may lead to a highly efcient technology and result in standardization. Third, the state or other empowered elite may take control of production in some cases and restrict access to resources. A restricted resource base presumably means reduced chemical and mineralogical variability in ceramic raw materials in comparison with nonelite-controlled resources, and this change results in pastes with greater homogeneity. These hypotheses provoke many questions about the relationship between paste and production. Generally, do analyses of ceramic pastes really tell archaeologists about the degree of specialization? Specically, does variability in ceramic pastes indicate differences in the organization of production? Does the evolution of production, as expressed in these hypotheses, lead to standardization of pottery pastes? Does elite control over access to resources lead to reduced variability in pottery pastes? To answer these questions, a more fundamental question must be addressed rst: What are the causes of paste variability and how does such variability relate to the potters behavior?

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This paper addresses these questions from a comparative ethnographic perspective. It seeks to evaluate the notion that the standardization of ceramic pastes can be used as an index criterion to infer specialized production. First, I argue why the ethnography of paste preparation should be used to understand the social signicance of ancient pastes. Second, I elaborate the factors that affect paste homogeneity. Third, I critique the notion that resource restriction due to elite control leads to paste standardization. Finally, I make suggestions about the direction of research necessary to link ceramic pastes to ancient socioeconomic patterns.

AN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE One way to evaluate the relationship between paste standardization and production organization is to examine the factors responsible for the variability of ceramic pastes from a comparative ethnoarchaeological perspective. Indeed, one cannot properly interpret the social implications of paste variability in antiquity unless raw material selection, procurement, and preparation are understood in present-day societies. To make this assertion is not to say that the contexts of the present and the past are the same, but rather that ceramics require certain common processes that can be known and understood by virtue of the similar behavioral chains required for their production, whether produced in the present or in the past. By understanding these processes and the sometimes narrow range of social and technological patterns required for their execution, one can come to understand the social dimensions of ceramic production more clearly and therefore improve the validity of ones inferences about the past (see Arnold, 1976, 1985, 1993). Although there is now an abundant literature on contemporary pottery making, little has been synthesized about the relationship between paste composition and behavior. Shepards classic synthesis (1956), Ryes handbook (1981, pp. 1618, 2939), and Rices encyclopedic sourcebook (1987, pp. 115124) of ceramic technology provide ethnographic detail about clay selection and paste preparation. A few studies explore the variability of raw materials and the selection criteria of contemporary potters (e.g., Arnold, 1971, 1972b, 1993; Arnold et al., 1991, 1999; Druc, 1996; Gosselain, 1994; Rye, 1976). Much less is known about the social context of raw material selection and procurement (cf. Bowser, 1996; DeBoer, 1984; Gosselain, 1994; Neupert, 2000). Extracting principles from the ethnographic literature about the social dimensions of paste variability is difcult because paste variability is interrelated in a complex way with geological variability, patterns of raw material procurement, and methods of paste preparation (Arnold, 1985; see also Kolb, 1976, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1997; Pollard and Heron, 1996, p. 106). These and other works (Arnold, 1975b, 1980, 1981, 1992, 1993; Bishop, 1980; Costin, 1991; Pollard and Heron, 1996; Pool, 1992) touch upon some of the points developed in this paper. The present study, however, explicitly focuses on the factors responsible for paste variability in ethnographic cases. These cases place paste

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variability in its larger social and historical context. Based upon these cases, I argue that the causal weight for paste variability is tied more closely to a variety of environmental, technological, and social factors than to the organization of production. The data for this paper are drawn from my ethnographic experience in diverse peasant communities in Latin America (Table I). Between 1965 and 1970, these communities produced utilitarian pottery for local and regional consumers; some produced nontraditional vessels for local residents as well as tourists. In all of the communities, pottery production was household-based. The trajectories of these communities have been followed unevenly since 1970, but all have changed. Most have diversied production as a result of a market economy heavily oriented to tourists, and at least one community has stopped producing pottery entirely because the potters choices of technique, style, and shape were simply too limited to adapt production to the changing demands of consumers tastes (see Arnold, 1989a). Ticul, Yucat an, Mexico Ticul, a city located in southern Yucat an, Mexico, is home to one of the few communities in Yucat an still producing pottery. My research among Ticul potters spans 32 years, from 1965 to 1997. During that time, I made 10 visits to the community (Arnold, 1967, 1971, 1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1997, 1999; Arnold and Bohor, 1977; Arnold and Nieves, 1992; Arnold et al., 1999, 2000; Ralph and Arnold, 1988). In 19651966, there were 76 potters and 28 production units in Ticul. Both men and women were potters, and most male potters worked full-time, whereas almost all female potters worked part-time. Production was oriented to a regional indigenous market, concentrating mainly on vessels for carrying and storing water and on ritual pottery used in Day of the Dead ceremonies in late October and early November. Potters traveled to different communities throughout the State of Yucat an to sell their pottery directly to Maya consumers in local markets, or sold it to middlemen. Some potters also specialized in mold-made coin banks that were sold or used as prizes for games of chance; these were transported by potters themselves or by middlemen ( esteros) to estas throughout southeastern Mexico. Production was located almost exclusively within the household and occurred largely within living areas. Some households intermittently hired outside potters to increase production, but such an expansion in personnel did not enlarge the space devoted to production. When I returned to Ticul in 1984 after a 14-year hiatus, the construction of piped water systems in most of the cities and towns of Yucat an had eliminated the demand for water-carrying vessels. In the early to mid-1970s, the government established a workshop in Ticul to teach potters techniques of molding and polychrome painting for making modern copies of ancient vessels. By the late 1970s, the Caribbean resort of Canc un was being developed and potters had

Table I. Potters Observed in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru Between 1965 and 1970 Gender of potters Male and Female Male Female Female Female Female Female Female Tortilla griddles Tortilla griddles Water carrying vessels, cooking pots, maize soaking vessels, pitchers Water carrying vessels, cooking pots, pitchers, maize soaking vessels Cooking pots, water carrying and storage vessels Vessels madeb Market Indigenous population

Community

No. of pottersa (households visited)

Ticul, Yucat an (D. Arnold, 1971)

76 (28)

40 (17)

50 (15)

Water carrying and water storage vessels; food bowls, incense burners, and whistles for All Saints Day, coin banks Water carrying vessels, gurines, beer vessels, storage vessels Water carrying vessels, maize soaking vessels, cooking pots, pitchers, gurines

Indigenous population and tourists Indigenous population and tourists Indigenous population Indigenous population Indigenous population Indigenous population Indigenous population

50 (17)

Does Paste Standardization Mean Specialization?

3035 (23)

3 (1)

Many (1)

Quinua, Peru (D. Arnold, 1993) Chinautla, Guatemala (D. Arnold, 1978a, pp. 347369) Durazno, Guatemala (D. Arnold, 1978a, pp. 347363, 379387) Sacojito, Guatemala (D. Arnold, 1978a, pp. 347363, 369379) Sacoj Grande, Guatemala (D. Arnold, 1978a, pp. 335337) La Ci enaga, Guatemala (D. Arnold 1978a, pp. 331335) Mixco, Guatemala (D. Arnold, 1978a, pp. 337345)

4 (4)

a The number of potters for Chinaulta, Durazno, and Sacojito are approximate. In an early publication (Arnold 1978a, p. 364), I uncritically used the number of

300 potters for Chinaulta from a source published in 1948 (Instituto Indigenista Nacional, 1948). In retrospect, however, this number was too high for 1970, and the number listed here is more accurate. 337

b More vessels shapes are made in these communities than those mentioned here (Arnold, 1978a, 1989b, 1993) and Thompson (1958). Only the most frequently

produced shapes are listed.

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begun to switch to producing tourist curios and large plant pots for hotel lobbies, apartments, and private homes. Pottery was still made for local populations in the form of coin banks and ritual pottery for the Day of the Dead, but this market accounted for a very small portion of the total production. By 1984, production was oriented primarily to the tourist market, with sales primarily to souvenir shops in the state capital of M erida and to shops and hotels in Canc un. The number of potters had grown to 105, and the number of production units had increased to 44. Each production unit still was organized around a nuclear family and their lineal descendants and afnes, but production units had expanded greatly in size to include full-time personnel hired from outside the household to increase production. Almost all production settings had expanded into specialized spaces outside of household living areas. With only two exceptions, production settings were located adjacent to the household within the houselot. These specialized settings used a much greater amount of space than that used in 19651970. Many owners of specialized workshop space also owned pottery stores along the highway. These shops had display areas both outside and inside to attract tourists, and they also contained specialized areas where objects were decorated by painting specialists. I returned to Ticul in 1988 and witnessed the continuation of the changes that had occurred in 1984. During a subsequent visit in 1994, however, production was in a slump because of a lack of demand, and several individuals who had made pottery consistently since the late 1960s had abandoned the craft. By 1997, the market for ceramics had been rejuvenated, production again expanded, and the number and size of the production units had increased. Potters who had abandoned the craft in 1994 were again making pottery. Production and the recruitment of labor were still largely household and kin-based. Valley of Guatemala The second ethnographic example consists of pottery-making communities in the Valley of Guatemala (Table I). My research in Guatemala was conducted in 1970 and focused intensively on the communities of Chinautla, Durazno, and Sacojito, with some observations in Mixco, Sacoj, and La Ci enaga (Arnold, 1978a, 1978b, 1989a; Arnold et al., 1978, 1991). Potters were women, who worked parttime. They made utilitarian wares for an indigenous population, and their vessels were distributed largely by middlemen who purchased the pottery at the large market located at the bus terminal in Guatemala City and then resold it throughout southwestern Guatemala (see Reina and Hill, 1978). Production occurred in a one- or two-room house or in a covered porch and competed with living space. Firing was done in the open with no kiln. Rainfall and inclement weather inhibited production during the rainy season by delaying drying and interfering with ring (Arnold, 1985); therefore some potters conned production exclusively to the dry season (Arnold, 1978a, p. 346).

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Quinua, Peru The third ethnographic example is the community of Quinua, which lies 15 km northeast of the city of Ayacucho in the south-central Andes of Peru. I studied ceramic production there in 1967, focusing on production, decoration, and distribution during a time of transition from making pottery for a local market to production for a tourist market (Arnold, 1972a, 1972b, 1975a, 1983, 1984, 1989a, 1993). Production was exclusively household-based except for a government workshop that employed three potters. Traditionally, Quinua potters were men who produced pottery on a part-time basis for a regional indigenous population. Vessels were used principally for carrying and serving water and corn beer (chicha); other earthenware objects reected local mythical themes and were used in ritual (Arnold, 1993). Beginning in the late 1960s, the exibility of form and technique required for the ritual pottery became the basis of the realignment of the craft to the tourist market. New vessel types were produced exclusively to meet tourist demand. Brief visits to Quinua in 1978 and 1979 showed ongoing pottery production, but the orientation of the craft to the tourist market in the 1960s and 1970s and the guerrilla war in the 1980s led some Quinua potters to migrate to Lima where they produced a wide variety of vessels in several large workshops for tourists and an international artisan market (Arnold, 1993, pp. 137, 138, 240; Mauro Enrique Gutierrez, personal communication, 1996; Mitchell, 1991; William P. Mitchell, personal communication). FACTORS THAT AFFECT PASTE VARIABILITY A variety of factors potentially affect paste variability in the behavioral chain from production through deposition. This paper, however, deals only with factors related to the production of ceramics. Other factors such as water in the clay mix, ring, depositional context, and use certainly can affect paste composition, but experience has demonstrated that the changes introduced by these factors do not appear to compromise the ability to answer the kind of provenance questions that archaeologists are asking about pottery.2
2 Since

I began my research using INAA in 1969, I have been concerned with the chemical variability introduced by mixing clays with water, postdepositional leaching by groundwater, and ring. While such factors certainly affect paste composition, my colleagues, Hector Neff, Ron Bishop and I have been convinced by a variety of evidence that such changes will rarely compromise the ability to relate pottery to clays. Chemical changes in the paste from water added by the potter would be expected to be largely limited to highly soluble salts of elements such as potassium and sodiumor at most, only a very few of the many elements used in neutron activation analysis. My colleague, Hector Neff, has developed a technique that simulates the mixing of clays and tempers to nd the clay/temper ratio that corresponds to the trace element concentrations of pottery made from it (Neff et al., 1988; Arnold et al., 1991, 2000). These simulated clay/temper ratios are found to correspond independently to the clay/temper ratio actually used by potters. This suggests that the water mixed with the clay to make the pottery does not obscure the relationship of red pottery to its constituent clays. It might be suggested that ring could also affect composition. Experiments at the University of Missouri Reactor Facility (MURR), however, indicate that the only element affected by ring is

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Natural Variability The rst factor that affects paste variability is the natural variability inherent in the ceramic raw materials themselves (see also Arnold, 1971, 1972b; Bishop, 1980; Bishop et al., 1982; Pool, 1992). This variability is profoundly affected by the local geology. Potters may tap into deposits of clay or temper or both by using a single mine or several mines spread out over an area. The internal variability of the clay deposit, the number of sources, and their distribution signicantly affect paste variability. Because of the local geology, topography, and the variability inherent in the deposits, ceramic raw materials can vary greatly. In Quinua, deposits of clays and tempers occur in various strata over a vertical distance of approximately 500 m and are spread horizontally over an area of more than 6 km2 (Arnold, 1975a, 1993). Both clays and tempers contain a variety of clay and nonclay minerals in varying quantities (Arnold, 1972b, pp. 95, 98, 1993, pp. 7477). By way of contrast, the geology around Ticul is more homogeneous than that of Quinua. This area, and all of northern Yucat an, is uniformly underlain by limestone. Nevertheless, an unpublished survey of ceramic raw materials carried out in the area in 1968 by clay mineralogist B. F. Bohor and myself demonstrated that the high quality ceramic resources available to potters are greatly restricted and not uniformly distributed across the landscape. Until recently, temper and clay used in Ticul each came from unique, singular locations. The temper source (called Yo Sah Kab which means over sah kab in Yucatec Maya) consists of an area of shallow mines that cover an area of approximately 0.1 km2 located 3.5 km northeast of Ticul. These mines exploit a bed of the clay mineral attapulgite (sak luum) that potters recognize as both
bromine, which is not determined routinely with INAA (Cogswell et al., 1996). On a more subjective level, my colleague Hector Neff (personal communication) observes that there are so many cases in which the archaeological pottery can be related unequivocally to sampled raw materials that it is not likely that water, postdepositional leaching, or ring signicantly compromise the ability to relate pottery to its constituent clays. I also recognize that ceramic composition can be affected by elements introduced into ceramic pastes by uses such as cooking, storing and carrying water and by the effects of burial for hundreds or thousands of years. The introduction of postproduction chemical variability in ceramic pastes is well-recognized by my colleagues in neutron activation analysis and is compensated for, as much as possible, by sample preparation. At MURR, the exterior of each sherd is removed by carbide burr and the sample to be irradiated is removed from the interior of the fabric. Samples are also soaked in distilled water to leach out any soluble salts deposited by use or depositional contexts. Hector Neff et al. (n. d.) advocates use of elemental mapping with a microprobe as a means for determining whether tempering or postdepositional changes might be contributing to patterning identied in bulk chemical data. For instance, if there is a higher concentration of some element near the surface of a sherd, it is likely that this element was introduced through use or postdepositional addition (Hector Neff, personal communication). Because these problems are so obvious to my colleagues and I after working with these materials for more than 30 years, and because they do not appear to negatively impact the source questions that archaeologists are asking, I have not described them in the text of this paper. Consequently, it appears that results from the study of contemporary pottery can be related to archaeological contexts, even though the sources of chemical variability of archaeological pottery may be greater.

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unique and critical for temper (see Arnold, 1967, 1971). Potters clay comes from a unique deposit of a random mixed layering of the clay minerals of kaolinite and montmorillonite (Schultz et al., 1971) at Hacienda Yo Kat (which means over clay in Yucatec Maya), located 5 km northwest of Ticul. X-ray diffraction analyses of this clay showed that its mineralogical composition is much more homogeneous (see Arnold, 1971, p. 25; Schultz et al., 1971) than the clays in Quinua (Arnold, 1972b, pp. 95, 98, 1993, pp. 74, 76).3 Similarly, potters in Sacojito and Chinautla in the Valley of Guatemala obtain a white clay from a single mine (Arnold, 1978a), which is the only source known for this clay in the valley. Although red-ring clays are available, white clay is preferred. Temper is obtained from many locations around the communities in the vast volcanic ash deposit that blankets the valley in depths up to 200 m (Arnold, 1978a, 1985, pp. 171173). Geological factors are thus responsible for the distribution of ceramic resources. Those resources that occur over a wide geographic area in places such as Quinua are likely to have more mineralogical variability than those obtained from a single discrete mine in places such as Ticul, Yucat an or Chinautla, Guatemala. Even in single mines, however, ceramic raw materials are still variable. Although a raw material may have little or no apparent mineralogical variability, it may have signicant chemical variability. Procurement Variables A second factor that affects paste variability consists of a group of factors that can best be described as procurement variables. These variables include potters perceptions of their raw materials; their concern for quality control; their settlement pattern; the energy required to obtain raw materials, land tenure patterns; religious beliefs; the need for different raw materials for different vessel uses, shapes, and sizes; procurement specialists; and change in sources over time. Potters Perception of Raw Materials Potters perception of resource suitability affects their selection or rejection of raw materials and may affect the variability of the resulting paste. Ceramic pastes are described by archaeologists using mineralogical and chemical categories, but these categories are irrelevant to the potters from the communities described here. Rather, they are concerned with more salient properties such as color
3 When

B. F. Bohor of the Illinois State Geological Survey originally analyzed this clay, he believed that it was partially dehydrated halloysite (Arnold, 1971, p. 25). Another analysis of its composition has indicated that it is predominantly a random mixed layering of kaolinite and montmorillonite (see Schultz et al., 1971) and includes the following constituents: mixed-layer kaolinitemontmorillonite 93.8%, kaolinite 2.9%, quartz 2.6%, anatase (a titanium oxide) 0.7% and trace amounts of calcite and K-feldspar (Schultz et al., 1971, p. 140). Bohor believes that his data are consistent with the mixedlayering interpretation and has accepted that identication.

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(Arnold, 1971), the presence of a crystalline substance (Arnold, 1971), the presence of gold-like particles (Arnold, 1972b, 1993, pp. 73, 74), whether the clay feels too sticky or tastes salty (Arnold, 1971), and its performance characteristics during drying and ring. The potter has learned about these properties from experience and uses them to select appropriate raw materials. Some of the potters selection criteria may have a mineralogical or chemical basis (e.g., Arnold, 1971, p. 38, 1972b, 1981, 1993, pp. 73, 74), but potters generally do not perceive the same amount of variability that chemists or mineralogists measure. Since potters perceive only a subset of the total chemical and mineralogical variability in their raw materials, paste composition may vary independently of the potters selection criteria. Paste composition is more profoundly affected by the natural mineralogical and chemical variability of the available materials. In a diverse geological setting such as Quinua, where clay and temper sources are spread over a great vertical and horizontal area, there is tremendous variability in the clays available (Arnold, 1972b, pp. 95, 98, 1993, pp. 74, 76), and this lack of uniformity affects the variability of the clays physical properties and the potters perception of their quality. Quinua potters do not select raw materials that are mineralogically uniform or consistent (Arnold, 1972b, pp. 95, 98, 1993, pp. 74, 77). They have no common or consistent criteria for identifying a suitable clay (Arnold, 1993, p. 80) and are unable to identify those appropriate resources (for making pottery) either by location or from their physical properties. Such variability of clays and their unpredictable quality can contribute to paste heterogeneity. In a different geological setting, where potters clay comes from a single mine and temper comes from a spatially restricted area, potters selection criteria may have more uniform mineralogical correlates. Potters in Ticul can separate their raw materials into categories according to unique physical properties (see Arnold, 1971, p. 38), and these categories contain distinctive minerals that are responsible for these properties. As a result, both the location and selection criteria enable potters to predict clay quality (see Arnold, 1971, p. 38). The uniformity with which Ticul potters select their raw materials is therefore strongly affected by the geological uniqueness of their sources. There is therefore no necessary or inherent relationship between the mineralogical and chemical variability of raw materials and the behavior of potters. Archaeologists should not expect potters choices to have consistent or precise qualitative or quantitative compositional correlates in the paste (see Miller, 1985, p. 211; Gosselain, 1994). Experimentation In Quinua, clays may vary so much that one clay may be suitable for making pottery whereas another found nearby may not be. The only way a potter can be sure that a clay is suitable for making pottery is to experiment with it by making a trial

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vessel (see Arnold, 1993, p. 112). If the trial vessel cracks or breaks, then the clay is either rejected or modied by experimenting with a different clay/temper ratio or a different type of temper (e.g., Arnold, 1993, pp. 7880). If the clay is rejected, then another is obtained from a different location. Thus, experimentation with different raw materials may contribute to paste variability in the archaeological record. Settlement Pattern Another procurement variable that affects paste heterogeneity is the potters settlement pattern. If ceramic raw materials are dispersed over a wide area in a varied geological context and the households that make pottery are dispersed over this same landscape, one may expect considerable paste variability. In Quinua, for example, the potters households are dispersed, the geology is variable, the sources of raw materials are dispersed, and great mineralogical variability occurs in Quinua ceramic materials (Arnold, 1972b, pp. 95, 98, 1993, pp. 7477). The potential effect of settlement patterns on paste variability cannot be ascertained, however, until a full range of the potential sources of ceramic raw materials are sampled and their natural variability is assessed. Energy Concerns A further procurement variable that can affect the variability of paste composition is the amount of energy necessary to obtain raw materials. Source locations for ceramic raw materials are usually constrained by energy considerations. This energy can be measured in distance (in km) that potters must travel or time they take for this to obtain their resources when they use their own bodies for transport (see Arnold, 1985, pp. 37, 38). Based on a worldwide sample of distances to clays and tempers, there are three distinct thresholds of energy that potters use, based upon the distance that they must travel to obtain these resources (Arnold, 1985 and revisions of the model in Arnold, 1988, 1991, pp. 337340, 1993, pp. 200204; Miksa and Heidke, 1995). The procurement distance preferred by most communities appears to be 1 km. The second threshold lies at 3 km for temper sources and at 4 km for clay sources. The last threshold lies at 7 km for both clays and temper and includes a cumulative total of 86% of the distances to clay sources and 91% of the distances to temper sources (Arnold, 1985, pp. 3557, 1988, 1991, pp. 337340, 1993, pp. 200204). The energy expenditure represented in the threshold model has two implications for paste variability. First, the threshold model provides crude probabilities for the distances that ancient potters likely traveled to obtain their resources (Arnold, 1985, pp. 50, 51, 1988). Stated simply, potters use local sources of clays and tempers; most ancient potters probably did not trek more than 1 km to obtain clays and tempers and few probably traveled more than 7 km.

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Second, the distances that potters travel to obtain their resources impacts the variability of ancient ceramic pastes and the interpretations of that variability. In a geologically varied area with widespread ceramic resources, paste variability may be increased by a dispersed settlement pattern when potters obtained their resources within the preferred 1-km resource area. With dispersed ceramic resources and the maximum probable distances in the model (7 km), great paste variability could occur with virtually any kind of settlement pattern. Paste variability thus may not covary with the potters settlement pattern in a simple and straightforward fashion. Rather, the relationship of paste variability to potters settlement pattern must be understood relative to the number of sources of raw materials in an area, their dispersion across the landscape, their internal variability, and the distance that a potter must travel to obtain those resources. It would be impossible to infer settlement pattern from paste heterogeneity alone without survey of raw materials in an area, an assessment of their variability, and independent data from actual settlement surveys. Land Tenure Patterns Paste variability can also be affected by land tenure patterns. Land tenure and the highly eroded character of the terrain in Quinua create problems for potters who want to obtain clay from a nearby source. Land is individually owned and intensively cultivated, and the terrain is sloping, dissected with deeply eroded gullies, and continues to be susceptible to erosion. Based upon the landholdings of local peasants and the amount of land required to feed a family, the mean amount of land per family is inadequate and a small percentage of the rural population is landless (Mitchell, 1991, pp. 5258, 7786; Arnold, 1993, p. 52). Families therefore must supplement agriculture with other activities such as craft production, including pottery making. Because clay is extracted from the surface, its mining destroys nutrient-rich top soil, leaves holes in elds, increases erosion, and generally ruins agricultural plots. Local farmers who are not potters thus prohibit potters from mining clay on their already inadequate and poor-quality land. Although potters often procure their raw materials surreptitiously (Arnold, 1993, pp. 64, 66), such mining prohibitions in effect help to disperse procurement activities across the landscape, and potentially increase paste variability. Religious Factors Local religious beliefs may be intertwined with the exploitation of ceramic resources (see also Arnold, 1971; Rice, 1987, p. 115) and may also help spread raw material procurement over the landscape. In Quinua, some resource locations are sacred because they are inhabited by the mountain god. This deity may take the form of an eagle, and any location visited by an eagle is sacred. If a ceramic

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resource exists in a sacred location, the mountain god must be placated with an offering of coca leaves or cane alcohol before any raw material is removed (Arnold, 1993, p. 66). If potters wish to avoid the cost of placating the deity, they may mine their raw materials in another location (see the incident in Arnold, 1993, pp. 66, 67). Such changes in mining location thus increase paste variability.

Intended Use Potters also select raw materials based upon the use of the vessels that they intend to make. In Chinautla, potters use a yellow clay for making large storage pots, whereas they prefer (except as noted later) a white ring clay to make other kinds of vessels, such as those used for water transport. In the late 1960s, potters in Ticul were more particular about selecting clay used for large water vessels than clays used for small gurines which could be plastered, sanded, and painted to hide the cracks and imperfections. In Quinua (Arnold, 1993), Ticul (Arnold, 1971; Thompson, 1958), Durazno (Arnold, 1978b), and Sacoj (Arnold, 1978b) different raw materials are chosen by potters depending on whether the pottery is to be used for cooking or not. In Quinua, Sacoj, and Durazno, potters select a clay that is high in nonplastics for cooking pottery and one that is low in nonplastics for noncooking pottery. In Quinua, the clay for the cooking pottery has also a greater range of particle sizes than that used for noncooking pottery (Arnold, 1993, pp. 7276). By way of contrast, Ticul potters use the same clay for cooking and noncooking pottery, but use different temper for each of these purposes. In Tonal a, a different clay is used for cooking ware than is used for water bottles (Di az, 1970, p. 141) and in Swat, Pakistan, coarse sand is used for cooking pottery and ne sand for water pottery (Rye and Evans, 1976, p. 28). In Ahmedpar East, Pakistan, one clay is used for paper-ne ware whereas another clay is used for unglazed earthenware (Rye and Evans, 1976, p. 62).

Shape and Size of the Vessel Raw material selection may be affected by the shape and size of the vessels. In the 1960s, Ticul potters recognized two major types of clay. One clay was abundant in the area and if it was used at all, it could only be used for small vessels because it caused vessels to sag and crack. The other clay occurred at Hacienda Yo Kat and could be used for all vessels because it had strength and did not cause them to sag and crack. Following the change in clay sources after 1992 (shown later), potters recognized a similar contrast between clay from the Tepak an source and that from the Dzitbalch e source. Clay from the Dzitbalch e source had more rocks, was more friable, and caused larger pottery to sag and crack. Clay from the Tepak an source was more rm, had more strength, and was better for larger vessels.

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Procurement Specialists The development of raw material procurement specialists can contribute to the variability of ceramic pastes. Part-time procurement specialists began in the 1940s in Ticul, but the development of full-time specialists coincided with the increased scale of production after the 1970s. In 1965, temper was procured by the potters themselves and by part-time specialists; clay was largely procured by part-time specialists. By 1984, production had intensied, the number of potters had increased, and both clay and temper were mined, prepared, and delivered by a new set of full-time specialists who were not potters at all, although most were related to potters by marriage. A few potters still mined their own temper, but it was obtained principally by the same specialists who mined clay. The emergence of full-time procurement specialists had a signicant longterm effect on the size of the areas from which raw materials were obtained. At both the clay and temper sources, the mining areas expanded (Table II) because of the expansion of production and the development of full-time procurement specialists. Because the depth of the clay deposit below the surface at Yo Kat required deep vertical shafts to provide access to the clay layer and digging of these shafts required more than one person, procurement specialists formed groups of two (sometimes father/son teams) to dig the clay. Multiple mines were dug into the clay layer where only one mine had been used prior to 1970, and each team had exclusive rights to extract clay from the shafts that they had dug. As one mine became exhausted, collapsed, or became too dangerous, another shaft was dug. A similar change occurred at the temper mines. Multiple mines had always occurred at the temper source, but now, each specialist dug a horizontal tunnel into the attapulgite layer at the temper mines, and had exclusive rights to mine temper from it. As one mine collapsed or became too dangerous, new mines were dug. With this change, the mining of the occasional potter who mined his own temper, and the addition of new miners, the area of the temper mines expanded greatly by 1984. Although the number of miners was reduced with the development of full-time procurement specialists between 1966 and 1984, any effect on paste variability was counterbalanced by the expansion of mining areas. The INAA of 86 kiln wasters from six potters households in 1988 suggested that there was so much variability in temper across specialists that it was simply impossible to tease out intracommunity patterns that indicated the reduction in the number of mining personnel and the expansion of the sources (Fig. 1, see also Arnold et al., 1999). Change in Sources Source locations of ceramic raw materials are not immutable and may change over time. Paste variability therefore may be affected by changing procurement

Table II. Changing Raw Material Sources in Ticul, Yucat an, Mexico, 19651997 Clay Temper

Year(s) of observation Extent Little or no change during period Expansion Expansion Expansion Expansion 2 2 1 1 1

Number of clay sources

Extent

Changes in mining area of each source since previous observation Number of temper sources

Changes in mining area of each source from previous observation Internal variation Expansion Expansion Expansion Expansion

Does Paste Standardization Mean Specialization?

19651970

Single mine

1984

1988

1994

1997

Multiple mines in single location Multiple mines in two locations Multiple mines in multiple locations Multiple mines in multiple locations

Multiple mines in single location Multiple mines in single location Multiple mines in single location Multiple mines in two locations Multiple mines in two locations

347

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Fig. 1. Principal-components plot of INAA from kiln wasters from six potters in Ticul in 1988 with ellipses drawn around the 90% condence limit for each potter (from Arnold et al., 1999, p. 69).

locations because of factors that limit access to resources. The explanation for this change is one crux of the specialization argument: paste variability is presumably reduced when elites control access to resources. Change in source locations result from at least three factors: environmental processes, land ownership, and the exhaustion of sources. Environmental Processes and Change of Resources Probably one of the most important forces that affect the change in resources is erosion (see also Arnold, 1975b, 1985; Kolb, 1997). In both Quinua and the Valley of Guatemala, potters live on or near highly eroded land that is constantly being altered by stream cutting and sheet erosion. Such processes are important in the exhaustion and creation of sources of ceramic materials as mines for raw materials collapse and ll with debris, and sheet erosion and stream cutting expose new sources. Such processes can help maintain a diversity of resources. Clay mines often collapse, inducing potters to obtain clays from other sources. The white clay source in Chinautla was inaccessible during the rainy season of 1970 because it had collapsed, but stream cutting had exposed numerous clay deposits along the river that runs through the community. In Ticul, the collapse of overburden in clay and temper mines has killed at least six people within informants memory, and several other miners have had close encounters with death. These kinds of

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problems have prompted safety concerns and led to changes in mining location and the expansion of mining areas. Such changes may increase paste variability. Land Ownership and Change of Resources Besides environmental processes, land ownership may play a signicant role in the change in resources. Since I rst studied Ticul potters in 1965, I have witnessed an almost total change in clay and temper sources in the wake of expanded production and its increased scale. Since at least the nineteenth century, Ticul potters have preferred to obtain their clay at Hacienda Yo Kat, which has been in the hands of regional or local elites from as far back as potters can remember. Potters recall at least three occasions in the past when clay from this source was unavailable. In the rst half of the twentieth century, potters were denied access to this source at least twice, and they had to obtain their clay elsewhere. On one occasion, the manager of the hacienda denied potters access to the clay because two potters from the town of Mama were killed when the mine collapsed. On another occasion, potters were prohibited from obtaining clay because it was too bothersome for the manager. Later, in the late 1940s, the mine yielded a clay which had too many rocks in it (shish kat), and clay had to be obtained elsewhere. During these gaps in the availability of the Yo Kat clay, potters obtained their clay from several locations within Ticul itself, even though the quality was inferior to the Yo Kat clay. Clay continued to be mined at Hacienda Yo Kat during the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, the amount of clay mined from the Yo Kat mine was diminishing because the deposit there was becoming exhausted. One wealthy potter, whose demand for clay always exceeded the supply, decided to hire workers to dig his own mine on the hacienda, but the owner ultimately denied him access to any of the clayeven through purchase. As a consequence, he had to obtain his clay elsewhere and ultimately found a source 80 km away, near the town of Dzitbalch e in Campeche. By 1988, he had purchased another clay source near Dzitbalch e and used his truck to bring clay to his two workshops in Ticul. Raw Material Exhaustion and Change of Resources From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, clay mining at the Yo Kat source had intensied in response to increased production stimulated by the demand for pottery at Canc un. Until 1970, only one mine was used commonly by all miners. By 1984, there were four mines. At the peak of clay exploitation during the late 1980s, the mining area had expanded and ultimately, one miner said, 40 vertical shafts between 8 and 10 m deep had been dug into the clay layer. As a result of this intensive exploitation, the clay became exhausted. Since the hacienda owner was using most of the land for cattle and cash crops such as maize, he was reluctant

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to allow the expansion of clay mining onto more of the hacienda land. Miners sunk one or two shafts outside of the mining area set aside by the owner for clay exploitation, but they did not nd any more clay. By 1992, clay mining at Yo Kat had been abandoned completely. During the declining availability of the Yo Kat clay, an entrepreneur from the town of Tepak an in Campeche brought clay from a source near Dzitbalch e to Ticul by truck and sold it to potters. By 1994, a second Ticul potter had obtained his own clay source in Campeche; by 1997, a second entrepreneur from Campeche began selling clay from another source near Dzitbalch e. By 1997, all of the clay used in Ticul was coming from four different mining areas in Campeche. Three of these locations were privately owned, and one was on public ejido land for the town of Dzitbalch e. The land tenure at the temper mines near Ticul was different from that of the clay source, but the raw materials there were also suffering from decades of intensive exploitation. The temper mines occurred on public (ejido) land, which is privately worked, and local peasants can go there and mine temper. By 1984, the mining area had expanded considerably due to the increased intensity of mining, and both potters and miners complained that more and more labor was required to extract temper. By 1988, the mines were becoming exhausted. At this time, one hauler who transported temper to Ticul had discovered that the critical ingredient of temper, sak luum (the clay mineral attapulgite), occurred in mines on his land near the village of Chapab. He then began to mine temper there and sell it to potters. By 1994, most temper production had switched to the new mines. Temper was still prepared using the same cultural categories and the same methods as those used at the traditional temper mines 4 km away, but mining was now in the hands of approximately 10 full-time specialists whose only relationships with potters were remote and strictly economic: selling prepared temper to workshop owners with trucks and to haulers who sold it to Ticul potters. A few potters and former specialists still mined temper at the traditional mines, but procurement there had diminished considerably. Are such dramatic changes in raw material procurement evident in the paste variability? The INAA of pottery from Ticul collected in 1964, 1988, and 1994 ( N = 250) indicates that only the resource shifts of the greatest magnitude are evident in the chemical patterns of the pottery (Arnold et al., 1999, 2000). Collected over a period of 30 years, this pottery spans the abandonment of the Yo Kat clay source and the substitution of clay sources in Campeche (Fig. 2). The analyses revealed ve major groupings according to the community in which the pottery was made and the date of collection. One grouping consists of the pottery made in the community of Akil. Two overlapping groups consist of pottery collected in 1964 and that collected in 1988. Another group includes pottery made 80 km away in the town of Tepak an in Campeche (Fig. 2); the pottery was made with clay from the same source as the pottery made in Ticul after the

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Fig. 2. Principal-components plot of INAA data from kiln wasters from Ticul, Tepakan, and Akil. Ellipses represent 90% condence level for membership in each group (from Arnold et al., 1999, p. 74).

Yo Kat source was abandoned in 1992. Pottery collected in 1994 fell into the Ticul group of 1964 and 1988 and into the group from Tepak an (Fig. 3). Paste Preparation Variables Another series of factors that affects the composition of ceramic pastes consists of paste preparation variables. There are several kinds of such variables: the potters physical alteration of the raw materials, the mixing of these materials to form the paste, the use of different pastes with different forming technologies, changes in paste recipes over time, and use of different pastes with different wares. Physical Alteration of Raw Materials Potters may physically modify their raw materials through grinding, screening, or levigation or a combination of these before they prepare the paste (see Fontana et al., 1962, p. 56; Henry, 1992, p. 65; Miller, 1985, p. 212; Nicklin, 1981, p. 173; Rice, 1987, p. 118; Rye and Evans, 1976, pp. 14, 20, 28, 39, 37, 57, 73, 78, 79; Shepard, 1956, pp. 52, 182). These techniques may alter the pastes particle size and may have a profound effect on its chemical and mineralogical variability (see Arnold, 1985; Blackman, 1992).

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Fig. 3. Principal-components plot of INAA data from kiln wasters collected in 1994 showing their relationship to the Ticul Reference Group collected in 1964 and 1988 and the Tepakan Reference Group collected in 1994 (Arnold et al., 1999).

Potters in several of the communities compared here modify their raw materials before paste preparation. Potters in Quinua, Peru, grind their temper and remove rocks from the raw clay (Arnold, 1993, p. 80). In Chinautla, Sacojito, and Durazno, Guatemala, the volcanic ash used for temper is sifted (Arnold, 1978a, p. 347). In La Ci enaga, Guatemala, untempered raw clay is ground to a ne powder prior to mixing it with water (Arnold, 1978a, p. 331). In Sacoj, Guatemala, potters grind a portion of clay to a ne powder before mixing it with another portion of clay (Arnold, 1978a, p. 336). In Mixco, Guatemala, one potter grinds her clay, whereas another soaks it in water and then picks out the rocks (Arnold, 1978a, p. 339). Physical alteration of raw materials may be a behaviorally complex process beyond simple crushing, grinding, or sieving, and may be masked by apparent compositional simplicity. Temper preparation in Ticul, for example, involves combining two behaviorally different materials: (1) weathered screenings discarded from earlier temper preparations (taachach), and (2) the freshly dug material (no oy) from the mines. Each of these materials contains calcite, dolomite, and attapulgite, and may also contain montmorillonite and weathered products of the attapulgite and montmorillonite (Arnold, 1971). The screenings and the material from the

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mines are mixed, crushed, and screened, producing a variable mixture of these minerals (Arnold, 1971). This preparation process may vary from miner to miner. Potters views of temper quality entail recognizing different varieties of the newly mined material (nooy), selecting the appropriate variety, and often using a unique ratio for mixing it with the screenings (Arnold, 1971). Potters know that the addition of screenings helps create a superior temper, but crushing the screenings requires more effort than mining. In some cases, specialist miners (as opposed to potters) have tried to minimize the effort of crushing the weathered screenings and mining the nooy by selecting a ne-grained argillaceous marl (kut no oy) that is easier to dig, easier to screen, and that adds bulk to the sifted temper. This material, however, is inferior to other types of nooy because it contains signicant amounts of the highly plastic clay mineral montmorillonite, which causes pottery to sag and crack. The behavioral complexity of Ticul temper preparation and the variability of inter-miner preparation has an effect on the compositional variability of the temper and subsequently, the paste. When 35 samples of this temper were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, the samples showed substantial variability in the amounts of clay minerals present (Fig. 4). Attapulgite was present in all of the samples, but the amount of montmorillonite and the degraded materials varied from 0 to 30%. The process of modifying raw materials may change over time. In Ticul, clay was traditionally soaked in water to make it plastic and then removed and mixed

Fig. 4. Bar graph showing the variation in the amount of clay minerals in temper samples collected in Ticul, Yucat an ( N = 35). The percentage of each clay mineral is based on the relative peak heights in the X-Ray diffraction patterns. Degraded refers to a weathered and poorly crystalline montmorillonite that is partially interlayered with hydroxy-alumina. The graph is based on data condensed from Arnold (1971, pp. 32, 33).

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with the temper. In 1997, the new clays from Campeche contained so many rocks that several workshops had begun using levigation to prepare the clay. In this process, the clay was completely liqueed; as the clay particles went into suspension, the rocks dropped to the bottom of the receptacle. (One potter reported that the rocks could weigh as much as 3 kg per jar of liquied clay.) The liquied clay was then poured out into a pile of temper for mixing. With both traditional clay preparation and levigation being used, one would expect an increase in paste heterogeneity. Paste Recipes A second type of behavior involved in paste preparation is the actual mixing of the raw materials to form the paste. This behavior must be understood from two interrelated perspectives. First, natural variability in raw materials and the variability created by their physical alteration creates variation in physical properties and performance characteristics. Second, the potter must assess these qualities and adjust them, if necessary, to the limitations of the forming technology so that he/she can make a pot successfully and it can be used successfully. The paste preparation technology must produce a paste that is plastic enough to produce a vessel, but not so plastic that the vessel will sag or crack or both after it has been formed, crack when it is dried and red, or crack or break during use. In order to produce satisfactory vessels, paste recipes must be exible enough to adjust to variation in the physical properties of raw materials. Most raw clays have at least some naturally occurring nonplastic minerals in them (see also Arnold, 1975b; Rice, 1987, pp. 118, 119). In some cases, the amount of such nonplastics may be suitable for the task at hand and require no further modication. In Quinua, for example, the clay used for cooking and brewing vessels contains 52% nonplastics, and it is not necessary to add additional tempering material (Arnold, 1972b, 1993, pp. 76, 79). Clays with sufcient naturally occurring nonplastics are used to make pottery in Mixco and La Ci enega in the Valley of Guatemala. In many other cases, however, the amount of natural nonplastics in the raw clay is insufcient to make pottery successfully. Because the clay used for noncooking pottery in Quinua has only 5 percent nonplastics, Quinua potters temper their clay with volcanic ash, and this modication increases paste variability (Arnold, 1972b, 1993, pp. 76, 78). Because raw materials are variable, and potters must adjust the plasticity of the paste to the forming technology, the proportions that potters use to mix their raw materials are not precise quantities set by tradition and immutable in all circumstances. Rather, the paste is prepared according to the physical properties of the mixture perceived by the potter. Potters in Ticul, Quinua, and the Valley of Guatemala, for example, provide recipes of ratios of clay and temper when asked, but they do not use these ratios rigidly. In Quinua, paste recipes must be adjusted to produce successful pots because raw materials are so variable (Arnold, 1993,

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pp. 80, 110). So, constituents are mixed together until the appropriate physical properties of the paste are achieved and the paste feels right (see also Miller, 1985, p. 212; Rye and Evans, 1976, pp. 45, 90; Thompson, 1958, p. 72). As a result, there may be variation from individual to individual and from batch to batch (see also Lackey, 1982, pp. 53, 54). During the process of preparing the paste, its physical properties such as stickiness may indicate it must be modied again to produce the appropriate properties for successful forming, drying, and ring. In Ticul, a potter may discover that his temper is inferior because it includes kut nooy which potters say causes pots to sag and crack (shown previously and Arnold, 1971). As a result, potters keep a supply of pure attapulgite (called sak luum) on hand to mix with the paste to counteract the adverse effect of inferior temper. The Effect of Forming Technology The forming technology may also affect paste variability. In Ticul, several techniques are used to make pottery. Large vessels are made with the traditional technique of thinning thick slab-coils on a turntable. Although the plasticity of the clay is adequate for this technique, it has limitations with the use of verticalhalf molding. The largest vessel that can be made successfully with a vertical-half molding technique without sagging is about 20 cm in any dimension. Mold-made vessels are thus smaller and also have thinner vessel walls than other vessels (Arnold, 1999). To insure that these smaller objects will not crack and break, potters prefer to use a temper with a smaller particle size than that supplied by specialist miners. So, they screen the temper again before the they mix it with the clay. In addition, vessels that are made with the wheel require a ner paste than do other techniques because a coarser paste will cut the hands when the vessels are thrown on the wheel. The selection of a ner clay for throwing on the wheel and a coarser clay for molds is noted by Kaplan (1994, pp. 1820) in Mexico. Similarly, in Dangwara, India, potters select one kind of clay and temper for wheel throwing and another type for forming with a technique similar to a paddle and anvil technique (Miller, 1985, pp. 212, 224). In this case, both types of techniques and paste occur on the same pot (Miller, 1985, pp. 212, 224). The Kalinga also use different clays for different techniques (London, 1991, p. 187). Assessments of paste variability thus should take forming technique into account if there is evidence that more than one such technique was used. Changes in Paste Recipes Over Time Paste composition may vary over time because paste recipes can change. In Ticul, paste recipes have changed several times since 1965 in response to variable availability of raw materials. There are at least three reasons for such changes.

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First, raw materials from the same source may vary over time due to heterogeneity within the source, and potters may modify their paste recipe accordingly to make good quality pots. In 1988, for example, when Ticul clay miners opened new mines at the Yo Kat source, potters had to use 1/4 less temper than used previously because the clay from these new mines contained many small rocks. Although such changes might be expected to affect the chemical variability of the paste, the differences may not be great enough to infer changes in the paste recipe from the chemical composition of the pottery. Comparisons of the chemical compositions of pottery collected from one Ticul kiln in 1964 with pottery from six household kilns in 1988 (using INAA) demonstrated that the two groups were not signicantly different (Arnold et al., 1999). Thus, the intensication of production that led to the expansion of the mines may not be detectable if based on analyses of paste variability through time. A second reason that paste recipes may change over time is because raw material sources become exhausted or inaccessible and new sources are used. Potters must be able to respond to this change and modify their paste, if necessary, to produce successful pots. When the Yo Kat source near Ticul was abandoned in 1992, potters used clay from Campeche, and by 1997, they were using clay from four major mining areas there. Clay from one of these new sources, they said, did not provide enough strength to avoid cracks in larger pottery. As a result, some potters mixed clays from the two different sources in a 1:1 ratio before the temper was added so that large vessels would not crack. Finally, paste recipes may change over time for less critical reasons that may have little to do with raw material variability or changing sources. In 1968 and 1994, potters in Mama, Yucat an, were using the same raw materials from the same source that was used when Raymond Thompson visited the community in 1951 (Thompson, 1958, pp. 66, 72). The paste recipe used in 1994, however, had changed greatly since 1951 and 1968 (Table III). Mama potters experienced no changes in production intensity and scale (as dened by Costin, 1991) between 1951 and 1994 as did potters in Ticul. Rather, potters continued to practice their craft within their households, and in 1994 did so seasonally, making pottery for Day of the Dead rituals.
Table III. Changing Paste Recipes in Mama, Yucat an, Mexico, 19511997, According to Informants Relative proportion Category of materiala chichi hi xluum hi sak sah kab sak kat (white clay)
a Except

1951 1/4 part 1/2 part 1/4 part 1 part

1968 1 part 1 part 1/4 part 1 part

1994 A little 2 parts None 2 parts

Note. Data from 1951 were obtained from Thompson (1958, p. 72). for white clay (sak kat), the remainder of these categories cannot be translated. They, however, consist of friable calcareous materials which contain some clay minerals.

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Ware, Style, and Paste Variability Several of the communities described here make more than one style, ware, or paste. In Quinua, there are three different painted styles, each of which tends to cooccur in different shapes; all painted styles are made with the same paste, although shapes and painted styles appear to correspond to social groups below the level of the community (Arnold, 1993, pp. 100, 192, 193). Multiple wares or pastes or both made in the same community are also noted by D az (1970, pp. 141, 142), Foster (1948, pp. 80, 81), Henry (1992, p. 64), Kaplan (1994, pp. 1820), London (1991, p. 187), Miller (1985, p. 37), and Rye and Evans (1976, pp. 28, 62). If multiple wares or multiple pastes were made in one community in antiquity, and multiple styles were made by different groups using the same pastes, then which ware or paste should be used to assess standardization and specialization? Assessment of standardization needs to be tied scrupulously to design style, technique, vessel size and shape, and paste type; different wares made in the same community may have different amounts of paste variability.

CHANGING ORGANIZATION, RESOURCE RESTRICTION, AND CONTROL OF PRODUCTION The literature on specialization has suggested that paste homogeneity may be a consequence of elite control over ceramic production (Rice, 1981), particularly if elites restrict access to ceramic resources. Such control, argued Rice (1981), is likely to reduce variability in the potters pastes because fewer resources will be used for production. Does increased control over access to resources mean that fewer resources are used? Does restricted access to resources necessarily result in greater paste homogeneity? In Chinautla and Ticul, certain clay sources have been controlled by elites, and potters have preferred the quality of clays from these sources to other clays in the region. When denied these preferred clays, however, potters use clay from other sources, even though these may be inferior or inconvenient. Potters in Chinautla, for example, prefer a white-ring clay from a single mine (Arnold, 1978a) that was controlled by a local landowner. During the rainy season, however, the mine collapsed, and was not reopened until the rainy season passed. Replenishing white clay during the rainy season therefore was impossible; if potters did not have enough white clay to make pots until the mine reopened, they obtained a red-ring clay that occurred along the river that runs through the community. Potters also substituted this clay because it was cheaper and more available even when the white clay was available. In Ticul, Yucat an, potters have preferred the clay from Hacienda Yo Kat, and this source has been under the control of elites since the late nineteenth century. In the last 100 years, this clay has been unavailable several times, but potters

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have always found other sources of clay even though these alternative clays were of poorer quality. The data from Ticul since 1965 indicate that contrary to expectations from the specialization hypothesis, increasing scale of ceramic production has resulted in the expansion, rather than the restriction of ceramic resources (Table II). This expansion comprises an increase in both the number of sources of raw materials and in the area in which mining occurs. Does elite control over resources result in the control of production? No. There are two alternative trajectories that stem from elite resource control. First, in Ticul and Chinautla, it is possible to control resources without controlling production; control of access to clay in these communities has never resulted in the control of production. In both communities, access to preferred clay resources is restricted, controlled, and private. The owners did not control production, but only controlled potters access to the clay. Owners of the Chinautla source hired miners and sold the clay to potters. In Ticul, the Yo Kat clay source has been under the control of elites since at least the late nineteenth century, when the Hacienda was owned by the son-in-law of a man who became the governor of the State of Yucat an, but it did not result in the control of production. In 1984, the owner of the Yo Kat source controlled access to clay by limiting the extent of mining and the number of miners, extracting a fee for each bag of clay mined, and requiring that only his truck be used to transport all clay. A second alternative trajectory from control of clay resources is that potters will develop alternative raw material sources if the preferred resources are controlled too tightly. As I have already shown above, when potters are denied access to resources under elite control, they become resource resilient and turn to alternative sources. One explanation for these alternative trajectories is that when production occurs in the household and is supplementary to subsistence (as it was in Chinautla and historically in Ticul), elites do not (and probably cannot) control production that is geared toward vessels for domestic consumption. Rather, in these communities, where clay resources are controlled, control is a function of land tenure, the existing social structure, and the uniqueness of the clay sources. In Chinautla, the preferred clay source was elite-controlled, but production was often seasonal, geared to vessels for domestic use, and was not elite-controlled. A similar pattern was observed in Ticul where ceramic production occurred exclusively within the household and was not controlled. Production organization in Ticul did not change until the recent expansion of the craft and the development of new types of vessels. The elites control of resources had the effect opposite to what the standardization model would predict. When the Yo Kat source was exhausted, and clay mining moved to Campeche, the change was evident in the compositional pattern (Figs. 2 and 3), but it resulted in increased diversity of sources and greater heterogeneity rather than increased standardization. Change in resources, in this case, did reect exhaustion of sources that resulted from the increased scale of production (among other factors) during

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the last 30 years. But, the Yucat an compositional data suggest that as scale of production over time has increased, paste variability has increased because of an increase in the number of production units, their physical size, the amount of personnel in each, and an increase in the number of clay sources in use. PRODUCTION ORGANIZATION AND COMPOSITIONAL VARIABILITY So far in this paper, I have examined the behaviors of selecting, processing, mixing raw materials to prepare pottery paste, and the environmental and social factors that affect paste variability. Now, I approach paste variability from the point of view of an archaeologist looking at the INAA patterns of ethnographic pottery from the Valley of Guatemala and Yucat an, Mexico (Arnold et al., 1991, 1999). According to the INAA of the Guatemala data, the compositional variability in the Chinautla/Sacojito whitewares is less than that of the Durazno whitewares (Figs. 5 and 6). Does this difference have any behavioral meaning? Do the Chinautla

Fig. 5. Principal-components plot of INAA data from all ethnographic whitewares and redwares collected in the Valley of Guatemala. Symbols differentiate Chinautla/Sacojito whitewares, Durazno whitewares, and Durazno redwares. Ellipses indicate the 90% probability level for group membership based on the two components plotted (see Arnold et al., 1991, p. 83). The sizes of the ellipses indicate the amount of variability in the groups (Figure from Arnold et al., 1991).

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Fig. 6. Principal-components plot of INAA data from all ethnographic redwares (pottery and clay) collected in the Valley of Guatemala. Ellipses indicate 90% condence limit for group membership based on the two components plotted (Figure from Arnold et al., 1991, p. 84).

and Sacojito potters use more restricted raw material sources or a more consistent paste recipe than the Durazno potters do? No. In fact, the areal extent of the clay sources of these communities are only slightly different. Chinautla and Sacojito potters use white clay from the same mine located 2 km from each community (Arnold, 1985, p. 273). Durazno potters use a different source which is a closely packed series of clay pits that cover an area no greater than 50 m in diameter. All three communities use temper from diverse sources in and around each of the communities (see Arnold, 1978a; Arnold et al., 1991). The INAA pattern distinguishes the Durazno pottery from the Chinautla/Sacojito pottery, but it does not distinguish the Chinautla pottery from the Sacojito one, which cluster together (Fig. 4). It is therefore possible to distinguish communities (or groups of communities) that use different clay sources, but not communities that use the same clay and different temper sources. The use of different temper sources is obscured in the INAA pattern by the fact that temper mines tap into the same geological ash deposit which covers the valley in various depths. Greater compositional variability does not clearly or simply, reect the greater spatial distribution of resources. Rather, INAA primarily reveals communities using different clay sources within the primary resource zone around each community, and secondarily reveals the affect of temper on the clays from those communities (Arnold et al., 1991).

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There is more compositional variability in the redware pastes than in the whiteware pastes produced in Chinautla, Sacojito, and Durazno (Fig. 5). Does this pattern suggest any differences in production organization? No. Redware pastes simply come from a greater diversity of clay sources than the whiteware pastes do, and some redwares are tempered with volcanic ash and some are not. The compositional patterns reect this diversity because the redware data points are much more dispersed than those of the whiteware (Fig. 5). The same potters in each community produce both whitewares and redwares, and the redware samples came from the same households as the whiteware samples do. Further, each community has virtually the same production organization (Table IV). Given these facts, it appears that the structure of the compositional pattern has little do with the organization of production or the distribution of production units in the communities. Clearly, paste variability in these communities exists independently of production organization. Rather, geological factors, areal distribution of sources, variability of the raw materials, and distance that potters travel to their resources are signicant factors affecting the compositional patterns of the Valley of Guatemala pottery. The compositional data from Yucat an (Figs. 2 and 3) and from Guatemala (Fig. 5) lead to two important conclusions. First, pottery made in each community tends to cluster together and be discretely separate from pottery made in other communities, unless they use clay from the same mine. Second, changes in the clay from a local source (Hacienda Yo Kat) to a more distant one are revealed in the principal component pattern. In fact, it could be argued that the compositional pattern of pottery made with the Yo Kat clay simply disappeared with the change in clay sources, even though pottery continued to be made in Ticul. CONCLUSIONS This comparative holistic approach to paste variability in three ethnographic areas uses mineralogical, chemical, ethnographic, and technological data to suggest that we have much to learn about the relationship of social factors to the standardization of ceramic pastes. Factors that affect paste variability are multidimensional and multicausal. They include the natural mineralogical and chemical variability in the raw materials and the number and distribution of raw material sources across the landscape. Furthermore, procurement variables such as the potters perception of suitable raw materials, the potters settlement pattern, the distances to sources, land tenure, religious factors, and change in resources over time can inuence paste variability. Potters sometimes have to experiment to nd a suitable clay; modication of raw materials by screening, grinding, or levigation can affect paste variability, as can the ratio in which raw materials are mixed to form the paste. Is it possible, then, to infer production organization from the composition of the ceramic paste? Can Costins (1991) parameters of production organization,

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Table IV. Parameters of Production Organization in the Valley of Guatemala Concentration Partially dispersed Household Part-time Scale Intensity Distribution of clay sources used Distribution of temper sources used Dispersed Dispersed Dispersed Dispersed Dispersed

Community

Context (control of production and distribution)

Chinautla

Household

Sacojito Dispersed Household Part-time

Household

Partially dispersed

Household

Part-time

Durazno

Household

Sacoj Grande No data Nucleated Household Household

Household

Nucleated

Household

Part-time No data Part-time

Single source for whiteware clay Multiple sources for redware clays Single source for whiteware clay Single source area for whiteware clay Dispersed sources for redware clays; some redware clays are untempered Dispersed sources of redware clays No data Dispersed

La Cienaga Mixco

Household Household

Cooking pots untempered; temper for noncooking pots is dispersed Untempered Untempered

Arnold

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for example, be inferred from such indirect evidence as ceramic pastes? Without more study of the relationship between paste variability and the geological, social, and behavioral variables of raw material selection, procurement, and paste preparation in ethnoarchaeological contexts, the use of paste data to infer production organization within the community of potters4 is premature. There is no simple correspondence between behavior and mineralogical and chemical variability in ceramic pastes. Changing types of organization are obviously important in the evolution of ceramic production, but it will be difcult, if not impossible, to draw convincing inferences about production organization from paste data that square with the behavioral realities of ceramic production until the relevant contextual factors can be controlled. There are simply too many complex intervening variables between paste composition and production organization. Paste composition appears to provide information primarily about the geological context and geographic location of pottery-making communities rather than information about production organization. Paste variability is related mainly to the variability of materials available to potters, the ways in which these raw materials are selected and processed to form the paste, and the changing availability of raw materials through time (see Arnold, 1980, 1981, 1991, 1992; Bishop et al., 1982). This conclusion is conrmed by the INAA of the ethnographic pottery from Guatemala and Mexico (Figs. 5 and 6; Arnold et al., 1991, 1999). Potters select raw materials and prepare them in a way that allows them to form and re their pottery successfully and to create a vessel that can be used for its intended purpose. Those materials that do not respond favorably will be rejected, avoided, or modied. Paste composition therefore must be understood rst in terms of the variability of raw materials available within a communitys resource area. However, many more variables must be assessed to understand the social meaning of paste variability. Where Do We Go from Here? These data about real-world processes of raw material selection and paste preparation indicate that archaeological paste composition should be viewed as a dynamic representation of the ways in which the potter manipulates local raw materials to produce specic vessel types, using the available forming technology. The threshold model of distance to ceramic resources suggests that clay and temper sources occur within a well-dened geographic area which circumscribes the natural causes of paste variability (Arnold, 1980, 1981, 1991; Arnold et al., 1991). Because the physical properties of raw materials often must be modied in paste preparation and may affect fabrication techniques, this geographic area may also circumscribe some technological factors of paste variability. Social causes of
4 See

Arnold 1981, 1982, 1993, pp. 113 for a denition of a community of potters.

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variability will be difcult to isolate in light of so much natural and technological variability. This community resource area approach views paste variability as the result of the actions of a group of potters selecting, modifying, and mixing raw materials within a discrete resource area that usually has a radius of less than 7 km.5 Based on the declining frequency of distances to resources with increasing distance from the community of potters in the threshold model, the probability that a resource area exceeds a radius of 7 km is low (see Arnold, 1985, pp. 3557, 1988, 1991, 1993), and distances to most primary ceramic resources in antiquity probably did not exceed 3 to 4 km. Because potters in a community interact, the group often has stylistic correlates (see Arnold, 1981, 1983, 1993, pp. 113, 140196), and these potters select and mix raw materials within their resource area differently than other communities do outside of this area. The resultant composition of pottery made in this resource area thus yields a compositional signature (both chemical and mineralogical) of the way that a community of potters (or set of communities, if their resource areas overlap) selects, modies, and combines raw materials into a mixture or mixtures when different wares, forms, or styles are made with different pastes (see Arnold, 1980, pp. 148, 149, 1981, 1993, pp. 200204; Arnold et al., 1991; Rands and Bishop, 1980). Ceramic pastes thus reveal production communities which select resources from their respective resource areas, and the way in which these communities modify and combine those resources into pottery (see Arnold, 1981). How then, does one interpret compositional analyses of archaeological pastes? First, one must recognize that any chemical analyses of pottery do not clearly or unambiguously reveal behavior. Indeed, the ellipses provided by principal component analyses of the log concentrations of INAA data are statistical abstractions that are far removed from behavior. Such chemical analyses of pottery need to be tied to behavior more clearly. A mineralogical or microscopic approach to pastes should thus supplement this chemical approach because the mineralogy of raw materials have expression in physical properties and performance characteristics of these materials, and potters often select and prepare their paste keeping in mind these properties and characteristics (Arnold, 1971, 1975a, 1980, 1981, 1993, pp. 7380). Archaeologists have known about the importance of combining chemical and mineralogical analyses for more than 30 years. In 1965, Shepard pointed out the importance of using both mineralogical techniques and INAA in her Foreward to the Fifth Printing of her Ceramics for the Archaeologist (Shepard, 1965, pp. ixxi) and this point has been made repeatedly by many investigators including myself (e.g., Arnold, 1980, 1981; Rye, 1981, pp. 4653; Tite, 1999). Such a strategy has been implemented in many areas since 1965 (e.g., Adan-Bayewitz and Perlman, 1985; Rands and Bishop, 1980; Wieder and Adan-Bayewitz, 1999). Even so, minerals, chemicals, and statistical clusters of elemental concentrations are not
5 As I have suggested elsewhere (Arnold, 1985: 3537), the use of water craft and modern transportation

infrastructure such as highways and trucks affects these distances.

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self-interpreting and still need to be understood relative to human behavior. As this paper has shown, there are some middle-range correlates in ceramic-producing communities that must be taken into account in such interpretations, but even these may be an insufcient basis for many inferences about ancient pastes. Consequently, it is necessary to test the hypotheses about the social causes of paste variability against actual ethnographic cases. Ethnographic Testing of Paste Variability There are many ways of testing archeological interpretations in ethnographic contexts, and the research summarized here has provided some signicant lessons based upon many mistakes early in this work. These lessons are worth emphasizing here. First, it is important to collect ceramic raw materials and compare them with red sherds produced with those materials. If at all possible, raw materials should be collected at potters households and collected by potters themselves at the sources. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the selection criteria used by potters are always a subset of all of the variability of such raw materials in an area, and it is important to control for potters selection behavior, in any ethnoarchaeological study. Similarly, other sources of clays and tempers around a community should be sampled to ascertain the qualities of resources not used by potters to better understand why they made the choices they did. This procedure was critical in the Ticul because potters recognized the superiority of some raw materials over others and had developed appropriate criteria for selecting them (Arnold, 1971).6 This approach was used in Mexico in 1968 (with geologist B. F. Bohor) and in Guatemala in 1970; but analyses of most of the data from raw materials that potters did not use were never published. Although I collected raw materials from sources not used by potters long before the rst nascent version of the threshold model was published (Arnold, 1976), it is now clear, in retrospect, that a survey of raw materials should begin within a 1-km radius around a community and ideally extend to a radius of at least 34 km. This strategy is critical to match raw material sources with pottery made in the present and the past and to understand the inherent variability of those sources. If ancient potters were not using the same sources as modern potters, then such a survey should help identify the source (or sources) of raw materials used in the area in antiquity. In any case, collecting of ceramic raw materials provides an empirical basis for assessing the amount of variability potentially present in the ancient pastes of the area. Second, ring wasters should be used in the analysis. I started out my study of raw materials in Ticul in 1965, but I collected only raw materials. Later in Guatemala in 1970, I collected wasters because they were available, easy to obtain, and provided a large, diverse sample of many vessel shapes. More recently,
6 This was clear when I recognized that potters made a practical distinction in their temper not recognized

or described by Thompson (1958).

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as my colleagues and I proceeded in our analyses, it became apparent that such wasters were an important sampling universe for many reasons. Wasters can provide continuity with earlier collections, such as those made by Metzger in Yucat an and by myself in Guatemala. The context of wasters is similar to an archaeological setting; wasters occur in a post-discard context and are as close to an archaeological context as one could be and still retain the association of their original production context. Wasters provide the broadest possible sampling universe across many production and ring events for two reasons: (1) pottery from any single ring event is sold and disappears quickly from the household and (2) wasters are allowed to accumulate over time because breakage is infrequent during ring. As a result, the use of wasters represents many of the potential sources of paste variability from a production unit over time. Wasters from a single ring event thus usually represent the accumulated products of a single production unit over time and provide as much spatial and temporal control as one could hope to obtain in an archaeological context. Waster piles should be sampled to include different vessel shapes and different sherd thicknesses (Arnold et al., 1991, 1999, 2000). Ethnoarchaeological tests of archaeological interpretations of paste variability should also strive to collect large samples. First, in multivariate statistics, like those used with the data from INAA, one must have more samples than variables to calculate the Mahalanobis distances (Harbottle, 1976, p. 57). In order to have a stable variance/covariance matrix to minimize the effect of one sample on the entire matrix, the ratio of specimens to variables should be ideally close to 3:1 (Hector Neff, personal communication; Harbottle, 1976). When the number of elements analyzed exceeds 15, as it does routinely at MURR, the number of samples must exceed 15 (unless some strategy for reducing the dimensionality of the data is applied). In one of our recent studies (Arnold et al., 1999), for example, 33 elements were analyzed and the samples collected for that study was 375. A second reason for a large sample is behavioral; a larger sample insures that more sources of potential behavioral variability in a household will be represented. Again, we learned from experience and the number of samples used in the analyses increased with time. Except for 28 samples of temper from 97% of potters (28/29) in Ticul collected in 1966 (Arnold 1971, p. 24) and a large sample of wasters collected by Duane Metzger in Ticul in 1964 for an unrelated purpose (see Arnold et al., 1999), only a few samples of clays, tempers, and sherds were collected from Quinua and Ticul in the 1960s. The large samples of wasters obtained from Guatemala ( N = 153) in 1970 and from Yucat an ( N = 548) in 1988, 1994, and 1997, however, have allowed my colleagues and I to develop many of the points enumerated in this paper (Arnold et al., 1991, 1999, in press). Finally, to understand archeological pastes and their change through time, contemporary pastes need to be studied diachronically in ethnoarchaeological contexts, with repeated visits to the same potters. Indeed, the assessment of long-term paste variability in Ticul has been made possible by my repeated visits ( N = 10)

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there over a period of 32 years. This assessment has been facilitated by mineralogical and chemical analysis of raw materials and a long-term perspective of changes in production and raw material sources. More such studies are needed to understand the role of paste variability in relationship to social factors in space and time. The Scale of Analysis of Archaeological Pastes What, then, is the appropriate spatial scale for drawing sociocultural inferences from archaeological paste data? I have now completed two regional surveys (Guatemala and Yucat an) of ethnographic pottery and raw materials. The data consist of 701 samples analyzed by neutron activation by my colleagues Hector Neff and Ron Bishop (Arnold et al., 1991, 1999, 2000). Although the units of observation in these studies were the production units (the household and workshop), these studies indicate clearly that households and workshops are not recoverable through paste analyses because of the many factors affecting paste variability (see Fig. 1). There is simply too much intracommunity variability diachronically and synchronically to permit valid and reliable inferences below the level of the community. In our most recent work in Yucat an (Arnold et al., 2000), we tried to identify workshops that used their own clay sources, but the variability of the clays and pottery from the region was so great that even sources 3 km apart were subsumed within the variability of the pottery made in the community from other clays in the area. The INAA patterns of the contemporary Guatemala and Yucat an pottery thus reinforce the conclusion that the principal component ellipses represent resource-selection and paste-preparation signature units of the resource areas of particular production communities. These signature units can be identied even in areas such as Yucat an that are geologically relatively homogeneous. Where does this approach take us in the analyses of archaeological pastes? This paper suggests that regional research designs that combine raw material survey with compositional analyses of sherds (using both mineralogical and chemicalbased techniques) from the full range of known vessel shapes and local raw materials (see Hegmon and Neff, 1993) can produce several kinds of inferences (e.g., Abbott and Walsh-Anduzi, 1995; Habicht-Mauche, 1995; Hegmon et al., 1997; Mills, 1995; Rands and Bishop, 1980; Triadan, 1997; Zede no, 1995). First, by nding matches in mineralogical and chemical composition between raw materials and sherds, these regional research designs can identify the subregion of production (Hegmon et al., 1997; Mills, 1995; Rands and Bishop, 1980; Triadan, 1997). Collecting ceramic raw materials around an archaeological site is a very old suggestion going back, at least, to the early work of Matson (1937), and this practice has been utilized by an increasing number of archaeologists and ceramic analysts (e.g., Adan-Bayewitz and Perlman, 1985; Bishop et al., 1982; Mills, 1995; Neff et al., 1992; Triadan, 1997; Zede no, 1994, pp. 4354). The mineralogical identication of temper, the identication of its source, and collection of raw

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materials can be used with the simulation methodology (Arnold et al., 1991; Neff et al., 1988) to match actual clay samples with tempered archaeological pottery. Given the complexity of the factors affecting paste composition described here, it appears that the study of production organization using ceramic pastes is best done on a regional level; thus, Costins (1991) criteria of production concentration should be applied on a regional, rather than local scale. Second, as I have suggested elsewhere (Arnold, 1980, 1981, 1992), the use of the threshold model of distances to ceramic resources can distinguish local from nonlocal ceramic production (e.g., Miksa and Heidke, 1995; Mills, 1995; Morris, 1994a, 1994b, 1995; Triadan, 1997). Nonlocal production indicates the occurrence of some kind of exchange and minimally marks the existence of rst order, low-level specialization where potters were not producing pottery just for their own use, but for others outside their community as well. Another way to express this correlate is to say that it was far more probable that pots moved beyond the thresholds (or limits) of a resource area than did raw materials. Third, regional research designs can produce inferences of community (Hegmon et al., 1997; Rice, 1991) and product specialization. From the compositional analyses of ethnographic pottery described here, community specialization can be inferred for the town of Mixco, Guatemala, which makes only tortilla griddles; the chemical patterning of the Mixco redwares differs from that of all other pottery in the valley (Fig. 6, Arnold, 1978a, 1978b). Similarly, Chinautla, Sacojito, and Durazno would be identiable as a kind of community specialization, because the compositional analyses show a separation between Chinautla/Sacojito and Durazno, and the whiteware sample consists almost entirely of water jars (Fig. 5, Arnold, 1978a, 1978b; Arnold et al., 1991). Although aspects of production organization inferred from archaeological paste data below the level of the community must remain extremely speculative at this time, there is a bright future for the continued use of pastes to study economic relationships between different community resource areas (or community signature units) on a regional level. Indeed, the use of paste analyses for understanding the organization of ceramic distribution has never been greater (e.g., Adan-Bayewitz and Perlman, 1985; Hegmon et al., 1997; Strazicich, 1998; Triadan, 1997; Zede no, 1994). Once a production community is identied by matching the mineralogical and chemical composition of local raw materials with archaeological pottery, it is possible to map intercommunity ceramic exchange and distribution, test different models of exchange, and chart changes in the organization of economic relationships through time. This strategy can identify the appearance, disappearance, and change of production centers over time. Such changes, however, are not necessarily the consequence of different patterns of production organization, but they are certainly the result of changes in the regional distribution patterns. Regional research designs therefore provide a productive approach in the study of ceramic pastes, but they must be accompanied by analyses of local materials and the use

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of distances in the threshold model to segregate local from nonlocal production (e.g., Triadan, 1997; Zede no, 1994).

Final Comments Probably the greatest lesson of this paper is that the technology and environment of production cannot be ignored in the reconstruction of archaeological production organization. As I have argued elsewhere (Arnold, 1971, 1989a, 1991, pp. 344345, 1993; cf. Gosselain, 1998, pp. 982), cognitive structures and individual choices are obviously important, but in paste analyses, the potters decisions are largely masked, both synchronically and diachronically, by a combination of the natural variability of raw materials inherent in the local geology and a variety of technological behaviors used in selecting, modifying, and mixing raw materials (see also Tite, 1999) in response to the performance criteria of paste and vessel alike. Social and political factors obviously affect the organization of production and the distribution of goodsboth ceramic and nonceramic. But, the relationships between paste analyses and social and political aspects of production cannot be understood until they are untangled from technological and environmental factors. Environmental and technological explanations will never replace sociopolitical explanations, but they must constrain such explanations and thus render them more valid and plausible in light of real-world pottery production. Although it is necessary to identify production locations and to understand ceramic production before making inferences about ceramic distribution, it is important to recognize that technological and environmental factors do not affect the organization of ceramic distribution in the same way that they affect the organization of ceramic production. Rather, the organization of ceramic distribution is largely affected by sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors. Therefore, socio-cultural inferences about ceramic distribution derived from paste analyses are far more consonant with the environmental and behavioral realities of ceramic production than are inferences about the organization of production. What does the composition of ceramic pastes tell us about the organization of ceramic production? In most cases, not much. The synchronic and diachronic approaches to the ethnoarchaeological cases described here indicate that potters often change their raw material sources and paste preparation techniques. These changing behaviors explain why compositional patterns blur through time (Arnold et al., 1999) and suggest that inferences based on such patterns are best made in terms of community signature units even though some short-term ethnoarchaeological research may show intracommunity patterns. These cases suggest that below the level of the local production community, little, if anything, can be learned about production organization. The primary usefulness of compositional analyses of ceramic pastes lies in the identication of source communities in temporal,

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geographic, and geological space. Such communities are those which exploit raw materials probably within a limited range of no more than 3 to 4 km, as suggested by the threshold model. Although the composition of ceramic pastes cannot tell us much about production organization, they can tell us a great deal about the organization of ceramic distribution within regional surveys by identifying source communities and their rise and fall through time. Archaeologists have only begun to exploit the compositional analyses of ceramic pastes to answer questions of socioeconomic and sociopolitical relationships so critical in understanding ancient societies. More long-term ethnoarchaeological studies of paste variability are needed to understand these relationships better. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1998 Society for American Archaeology meetings in Seattle, Washington, in the symposium Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology organized by Brenda Bowser. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1992 American Anthropological Association meetings in San Francisco in the symposium Ceramic Ecology 92: Current Research on Ceramics, organized by Louana M. Lackey and Charles C. Kolb. My presentations at these meetings were supported by the Faculty Development Fund and the Aldeen Fund of Wheaton College. I am grateful to Dr. Ward Kriegbaum (Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean) and Dr. Stan Jones (Provost) for making funds available to present this paper and prepare it for publication. Recent eld work for this study was supported by the Fulbright Program (1984), Wheaton College Alumni Association (1994, 1997), Wheaton College Human Needs and Global Resources Program (1988), and Wheaton College Faculty Development Fund (1988), National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant No. RK 20191-95 for 1997) and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Grant No. 6163, 1997). The laboratory research for INAA was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (BNS 8801707, DBS-9102016) to the Missouri University Reactor Facility, supplemented by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant No. RK-20191-95) and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Grant No. 6163) to cover the consumable laboratory supplies. Ron Bishop, Hector Neff, Gary Feinman, Cathy Costin, and Michelle Hegmon made many helpful comments on this paper. I am grateful for the collaboration of Ronald Bishop and Hector Neff on this and for continuing research investigating compositional variability of pottery and raw materials in contemporary pottery-making communities. An early revision of this paper was possible because of release time from teaching provided under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant No. RK-20191-95). I thank many anonymous reviewers of this paper from previous submissions to American Antiquity, Latin American

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Antiquity, and those who reviewed it for this journal (Philip Arnold, Nicolas David, Michael B. Schiffer, Eric Blinman, and Cathy Costin)all of whom have made this a better paper. Finally, I am grateful to Brenda Bowser for her diligent and persistent criticism of the paper. Her patience, encouragement, and perseverance improved its quality dramatically. REFERENCES CITED
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