DISSERTATION: USULUTAN: RESIST CERAMICS AND INTERACTION IN THE TERMINAL FORMATIVE SOUTHERN MAYA REGION
Usulutan decorated effigy vessel in the collection of the Mint Museum. Photo: Mint Museum.
Rio Santiago Usulutan sherd from Bilbao, Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala, excavated by L.A. Parsons in the collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum.
This doctoral dissertation project explores the role of material objects in supporting social networks through an investigation of a distinctive style of resist-decorated pottery produced and exchanged along the coast of Guatemala and El Salvador within the Late Formative period (300 BC – AD 200). This decorative technique, known as Usulutan, has been found in diverse contexts suggesting a social role related to elite exchange, religious practice, and collective feasting.
Archaeological ceramics are uniquely positioned to offer insight on ancient peoples, reflecting both intentional and unintentional aesthetic, technical, and social choices. Building on a long-standing anthropological focus on prestige goods and exchange networks, a distinctive style of resist-decorated pottery produced and exchanged along the Pacific Coast of Guatemala and El Salvador is investigated. Integrating archaeological, art historical, and compositional data on this little understood social valuable, analysis of the production of these vessels and their movement through the landscape will demonstrate how material objects play a crucial role in the development of social relationships. In addition to contributing to gaps in existing compositional databases and assisting in the evaluation of methods for the chemical characterization of archaeological ceramics, the project will also provide students with the opportunity to gain laboratory skills related to archaeological science.
Emphasizing the material basis for social networks, this project evaluates hypotheses of open and restricted access to a technically complex ceramic decorative style. Was this style available to the general population or restricted to elite communities? Which potting communities had access to the technical artistry required to produce these vessels, and did every community produce them using the same technique? And who exchanged ceramics with whom? Answering these questions furthers understandings of how social networks are supported and maintained by economically and symbolically significant social valuables. This project will use bulk compositional data acquired using instrumental neutron activation analysis, surface compositional data acquired using portable x-ray fluorescence, microscopic analysis of surface treatment, and data on style and form to trace interaction between archaeological sites. Examining the production of and access to these socially significant objects will illuminate systems of pottery production on a regional scale and the ways in which human relationships are negotiated and constructed through material means on a broader level.
Ceramic sherd before drilling for INAA samples. From Bilbao, Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala, excavated by L.A. Parsons in the collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Ceramic sherd after drilling for INAA samples. From Bilbao, Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala, excavated by L.A. Parsons in the collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum.
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