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Ceramic Variety, Type Cluster, and Ceramic System in Southwestern Pottery Analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Joe Ben Wheat ,
James C. Gifford  and
William W. Wasley
Joe Ben Wheat
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Colorado
James C. Gifford
Affiliation:
Peabody Museum West of the Pecos Tucson, Arizona
William W. Wasley
Affiliation:
Arizona State Museum Tucson, Arizona
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Extract

During the past 20 years, the number of named pottery types in the Southwest has increased at such a rate that it is now virtually impossible for an archaeologist to know and be familiar with more than a small percentage of them. Some of these types are totally new, but a surprisingly large number represent refinements in terminology or segregations from more inclusive categories, resulting from further study and increasingly complex technological analyses. This proliferation of named types has alarmed many archaeologists. There can, however, be no legitimate doubt that if the intricate ceramic history of the Southwest and other areas of the New World is to be understood, research analysts must be free to break down their material to as fine a point as necessary in order to localize in time and space the infinitesimal variants of pottery which constitute, with other aspects of material culture, the documents of regional prehistory.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , July 1958 , pp. 34 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1958

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Footnotes

*

This paper, from its inception, has been a cooperative endeavor to produce a taxonomic framework suited to current needs for the analysis of ceramics in the American Southwest. A draft of the present work was discussed during informal meetings and an official session , of the August, 1957, Pecos Conference held at Gila Pueblo in Globe, Arizona. Many ideas were exchanged during the conference, and to those who participated we express our appreciation for their constructive and stimulating remarks. The following persons took an active part in discussions and were most helpful with suggestions: David A. Breternitz, Harold S. Colton, Alfred E. Dittert, Jr., Rex E. Gerald, Emil W. Haury, Anna O. Shepard, Stanley A. Stubbs, Nathalie F. S. Woodbury, and Richard B. Woodbury. Special thanks are due Philip Phillips, Gordon R. Willey, Stephen Williams, and Hugo G. Rodeck for reviewing the final manuscript, Watson Smith and Robert F. Burgh for encouragement and editorial advice, and Carol A. Gifford for her editorial and secretarial assistance. The authors accept responsibility for the final form in which these concepts are presented. Charts are by James C. Gifford.

Apropos of what has taken place in the field of pottery analysis since the first Pecos Conference 30 years ago and of the ideas under consideration, the following remark in a recent letter from A. V. Kidder seems particularly appropriate: "As a matter of fact, I sometimes feel like an elderly rabbit returning to his home brier patch to find that he has left ten thousand descendants…."

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