Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Value and Depositional History of Middle Preclassic Pottery in the Peten Lakes Region of Guatemala

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Under the guidance of Dr. Prudence Rice, Katherine South will examine the emergence of status differentiation during the Middle Preclassic period (1000-350 BC) in the Maya lowlands through the study of pottery and its depositional contexts. Throughout Mesoamerica, the Middle Preclassic was a time of transition in social, economic, and political development, with emerging status differentiation evident in rare, exotic materials such as jade and shell. This study instead investigates abundant, locally made pottery and how it was used, manipulated, and valued as part of these societal transitions. The Middle Preclassic pottery analyzed was previously excavated from four communities (sites) in the Petén lakes region of Guatemala, where Maya had begun building substantial constructions. The research is important in a context which extends beyond Mayan archaeology for two reasons. First, it will provide insight into how social complexity and status hierarchies emerge. Secondly it will help to develop an analytic technique which archaeologists may apply in many contexts and in many regions of the world.The project focuses on the ways value was encoded in this pottery. Unlike painted polychromes of the Classic period, Middle Preclassic pottery displayed little overt status-marking decoration, suggesting that its value was based on its function and use ("use-value") rather than attributes related to the labor of production ("production-value") such as surface decoration. Thus the study examines the role of use-value in Middle Preclassic pottery through an integrated analysis that includes: visual classification based on vessel shape and typological designation; contextual information based on where it was excavated; and compositional study that focuses on the clay recipes used by the potters in production. These analyses will provide information not only about production choices, but also about differences among sites and depositional contexts, thereby emphasizing the importance of contextual information when considering the role of object-value in the archaeological record. This comprehensiveness permits not only study of how pottery was valued by the early Maya in the Petén lakes region, but connects to larger anthropological questions of how emerging status differentiation in communities impacted the notion of value in material culture in general and the processes underlying development of prestigious goods in complex societies.Beyond investigating how early Maya pottery was valued, this study seeks to demonstrate the importance of an integrated approach to artifact analysis that takes into account both contextual and physical attributes. This project will provide graduate student training while also extending the opportunity for collaboration among researchers who study early pottery in the Maya lowlands. Additionally, the project will create a type collection and catalog of early Maya pottery in the lakes region, which will enable Guatemalan and foreign researchers to study representative samples of this material. Results of the study will be made available through a doctoral dissertation and, in English and Spanish, in peer-reviewed journals and at professional meetings in the United States and Guatemala. Data will also be made available online through the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR).