Pottery and Practice: The Expression of Identity at Pottery Mound and Hummingbird Pueblo

by Suzanne Eckert

Overview

Pottery and Practice examines decorated pottery and its production in prehispanic New Mexico's Lower Rio Puerco area through the lens of practice theory. Arguing that social relations can be interpreted from the mundane practice of everyday life, Eckert shows how the relationship between ethnicity, migration, and ritual practice combined to create a complexly patterned material culture among residents of two fourteenth-century Pueblo villages.

Focusing specifically on the social boundaries that existed between immigrant and local Pueblo groups, she argues that tensions between these groups were articulated in potters' decisions about how to make and decorate their vessels. After providing the archaeological and temporal context of her study, Eckert defines communities of practice and communities of identity within Pottery Mound and Hummingbird Pueblo, and then examines these communities in light of migration and ritual practice.

About the Author:
Suzanne L. Eckert is an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University in College Station

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826338365
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	01/01/2008
Series:	no
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

Table of Contents

List of Figures     ix
List of Tables     x
Acknowledgments     xiii
Pottery and Practice: An Introduction     1
Understanding the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of Social Boundaries through Practice Theory     9
Pottery Mound and Hummingbird Pueblo: Archaeological and Temporal Context     15
Communities of Practice in the Lower Rio Puerco Area     31
Identifying Potential Homelands for Immigrants Living in the Lower Rio Puerco Area during the Fourteenth Century     43
Communities of Identity in the Lower Rio Puerco Area     57
Social Integration and Ideology: A New Ritual System along the Lower Rio Puerco     81
Pottery and Practice in Fourteenth-Century Villages along the Lower Rio Puerco     97
Pueblo III and Pueblo IV Pottery Types Produced in the Lower Rio Puerco Region     107
Seriation of Ceramic Types from the Lower Rio Puerco District     123
Description of Petrographic Temper Types     145
Code Sheet and Summary Tables for Faunal Analysis     153
References     175
Index     197