Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Why Pointed Pots? An Examination of the Relationship Between Ceramic Form, Subsistence, and Mobility

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Under the supervision of Dr. Patricia Crown, Kathleen Helton will examine the relationship between ceramic form, function, and performance in cooking vessels. Pottery vessels with pointed bases are found in association with some mobile to semi-sedentary populations practicing a hunter-gatherer economy. This project will test how pointed bases affect the strength, heating properties, and transportability of a vessel. In order to do this, vessels from two groups: the Navajo and the Jemez from the Southwestern United States, will be documented, and reproductions of both forms will be made from vessel measurements and used to test impact strength, thermal shock resistance, and thermal efficiency. Navajo and Jemez vessels are ideal for this study due to the variation in cooking vessel form between the two groups as well as their geographic proximity to one another. This study is of broad anthropological interest due in part to its implications for ceramics from other parts of the world over time. The intellectual merit of the proposed research includes elucidating the relationship among hunter-gatherers, ceramics, and mobility. Methodologically, this research pursues multiple lines of evidence to understand how ceramic form, cooking strategy and diet, and thermal features relate to each other and how this relationship can be used in explaining the archaeological record. The broader impacts of this research outside of the anthropological community are three fold. The first impact is that the proposed study will provide a young scholar with professional training. A second impact is that this research will contribute to Native potters' technological understanding of the choices that their ancestors made in constructing ceramic vessels. A third impact of this study is in its contribution to society. The results of this study can be used in museum displays to educate the public on the possible reasons that ceramic vessels were made the way they were. In understanding why people in the past made the choices that they did, we can better understand how economic decision making affects technological change.