Sunday Eiselt
hohokam nsf
(submitted)
Ceramic Manufacturing and the Ritual Mode of Production in the Hohokam Core of Central Arizona
B. Sunday Eiselt and J. Andrew Darling
PROJECT SUMMARY
At their height during the middle Sedentary Period (A.D. 1000-1070), the prehistoric Hohokam of central Arizona had in place an intensive and large-scale system of pottery manufacture that sustained far-reaching social interaction through regional ceramic exchange and the ceremonial ballcourt system. Such large-scale craft production is normally a signature of complex society, which harbors the infrastructure for intensification, and is fueled by its surpluses. Yet, the Hohokam were relatively egalitarian, with neither cities, nor an extensive division of labor, nor marked social stratification. How, then, in the absence of more complex social systems, was production among the Sedentary Period Hohokam organized and made possible? The goal of the proposed research is to use the Hohokam case to explore the relationships between intensified ceramic manufacture, social complexity, and the ritual mode of production in middle-range societies of the American Southwest.
The ceramic industry of the 11th-century Hohokam “core” at Snaketown and allied communities in the middle Gila Valley produced rich quantities of red-on-buff ceramics to supply a market far exceeding local demand. Traditional studies have acknowledged the productive capacity of the core, and proposed that ceramic surpluses were exchanged for agricultural products, especially cotton (Abbott et al. 2007a). Such exchange may even have contributed to the elaboration of integrative rituals associated with the ballgame. But just how productive was the core area? What was the relationship between production and supply, or producer and consumer? What role could (or did) intensive production of ceramics play in Hohokam society? Resolving these questions requires a deeper understanding of the organizational principles and capacity of core Hohokam technological systems.
To achieve that understanding, our research focuses on the technology of red-on-buff ceramic production through a compositional study, aided by petrographic thin section analysis and chemical assays using Time of Flight-Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectroscopy (TOF-LA-ICP-MS). This approach targets the components of red-on-buff sherds including clay, temper, and paint, and will enable us - working in close collaboration with the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program - to identify and characterize raw material sources, and reconstruct patterns of ceramic manufacture. More specifically, the mineralogical and chemical composition of raw material from different sources will be compared to middle Sedentary Period ceramics from eight sites distributed across the region, including Snaketown. This will enable us to map the circulation of raw materials, not just finished products, and thereby identify, geochemically, resource trade and in so far as it exists, task segmentation among producer communities.
The results of such an analysis will provide the data required to test whether ceramic manufacture for exchange was concentrated at independent centers such as Snaketown, or whether there was a division of labor in the production and distribution of raw materials that was part of a broader system for enhancing production efficiency. Such should also inform on whether (or how) the productive system connected with regional exchange or nascent market systems. And it has the potential to reveal much about the nature of large-scale craft industries in middle range societies like the Hohokam.
Roy A. Rappaport observed in his seminal statement on the role of ritual cycles that, “ritually regulated societies comprise a mode of production” without stratification or ranking (1979:73). Hence, the intellectual merit of this research rests on the opportunity to explore the relationships of craft production to ritual and economic intensification in the Hohokam core; a region that until recently has received little archaeological attention since Emil Haury’s pioneering excavations of the 1960s. The end result may put in stark relief theoretical statements that claim highly productive craft industries can only occur in the presence of managerial elites, and at the very least will provide a critical foundation for understanding of socio-political complexity and producer relations that currently elude studies of Hohokam exchange. The unique geochemical databases and technological insights that derive from the research will have broader impacts as well, namely in the close and collaborative involvement of tribal research programs, and in generating results that have the potential to better define the historical role of the peoples of Arizona’s middle Gila River.
