Developments in Ceramic Materials Research

2
Leslie G. Cecil
comprehensive dataset. This holistic and interdisciplinary approach is the first in the
Maya area to comprehensively combine stylistic and technological characteristics of
pottery (technological styles) and will ultimately address issues data about changing
social relations during the Postclassic period and how, during times of stress, people used
pottery to help identify themselves as part of a cohesive sociopolitical group.
INTRODUCTION
Analysis of pottery manufacture in many regions of the world has focused on stylistic,
mineralogical, or chemical analyses to provide information concerning identity, boundary
maintenance/establishment, and exchange patterns. While many of these studies have proven
fruitful, they have been limited in scope due in most part to the limitation of the methodology
used. However, when data from stylistic, mineralogical, and chemical analyses of pottery are
examined together with ethnohistorical, architectural, and burial data, it is possible to infer
patterns of manufacture that relate to identity and exchange.
In this chapter, I argue that this combination of analyses, and not any single methodology
used alone, provides the data sets that allow me to suggest which sociopolitical groups in
central Petén, Guatemala may have manufactured what kinds of pottery with different
stylistic and technological characteristics. This is possible because the different kinds of
pottery result from choices made by Postclassic Petén Maya potters within a social structure
that embodies their identity. The existence of these stylistically- and technologically-based
pottery groups that are embedded in structure and agency allow the archaeologist to study
materials such as clay and mineral inclusions and patterns of pottery manufacture as practice.
As such, the patterns of manufacture are not merely “ ‘added on’ in order to signal group
identity,” but are choices made by the potter “by which a sense of group identity is formed
and transformed as being coeval with and identical to the process by which a sense of
technique is formed and transformed” (Dietler and Herbich 1998:247). As such, potters, as
well as other members of a society, may continually construct and reconstruct their identity
by creating and recreating their social structures through daily activities such as pottery
manufacture (Giddens 1984:17).
As a daily activity, pottery manufacture becomes a social activity when the choices made
during the manufacturing process are examined as a social phenomenon. The patterns of
manufacture (choices) are made in a specific manner, under the umbrella of the culture’s
social structure and reproduced. As such, patterns of manufacture may be reproduced without
the potter being fully cognizant of the set of “rules” or operational sequences established
through the mediation of structure and agency (Lechtman 1977; Lemonnier 1992). For
example, a clay source may be continually used without question because one social group
does not have access to clays in another territory or because it is customary to use that source.
“These dispositions of choice and perceptions in the domain are interwoven with similarly
formed patterns of choice and perceptions in the domain of social relations and cultural
categories in ways that evoke and reinforce each other such that they come to be perceived as
‘natural’” (Dietler and Herbich 1998:246). Therefore, clusters of pottery traits (stylistic,
mineralogical, and chemical), as well as architectural designs and burial practices, are
compatible with the social structures and they reflect the social identity and history of the
culture.