Dissertation Research: Ceramic Production in the Maya Formative: A Study of Ceramic Technology at K'axob, Belize

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McAnany Under the direction of Dr. Patricia McAnany, Ms. Mary Lee Angelini will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will analyze ceramics from the archaeological site of K'axob, a prehistoric Mayan village. Her goal is to look at changes in the manufacture of ceramics over time. To determine the types of clays which the K'axob potters exploited, she will compare ceramic pastes from three hundred and thirty-eight vessels from the site to one hundred clay samples from locations in northern Belize proximate to K'axob. Comparisons will be based on ceramic petrography and INAA. Vessels will be sampled to obtain information on the full range of types present and clay locales will be tested on the basis of soil data and topographical features. Determination of changes in production technology will be investigated through analysis of formation techniques as revealed through breakage patterns, xeroradiography and petrography and determination of clay modification strategies through petrography and experimental testing. Changes in vessel size and form will also be noted. Because ceramics are so abundant in many prehistoric sites and because they preserve well in the ground, they provide a focus for much archaeological analysis. Archaeologists try to reconstruct prehistoric social, political and economic organization on the basis of detailed analysis of such remains. The site of K'axob spans the time period when complex Mayan society emerged. Most archaeologists believe that as social complexity increases and centralized authority appears, objects such as ceramics become more standardized because production is taken over by specialists who operate under a hierarchical form of control. The case of K'axob is very interesting because - based on visual inspection of ceramic form - just the opposite seems to occur. If this is the case, it challenges a basic archaeological assumption. Ms. Angelini wishes to see if this pattern holds when one examines the same corp us of data from a technological perspective and determines where raw materials were collected and how vessels were made. This project is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many Middle Americanist archaeologists. It will help scientists to refine analytic tools and models and it will assist in the training of a promising young scientist.