With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Scott Van Keuren and a team of students and colleagues will conduct archaeological fieldwork at two large Ancestral Pueblo villages in the Silver Creek drainage, Arizona. The project will investigate the origins of iconographic-style pottery during the early Pueblo IV period (AD 1300 to 1400), a time when village size increases and large central plazas are expanded throughout the Pueblo world. These changes in public architecture and painted ceramics are viewed by many as evidence for the appearance of integrative religious ideologies. However, the iconographic-style pottery (Fourmile style White Mountain Red Ware) was widely imitated by potters throughout the region who failed to accurately render its symbolic imagery. This pattern of emulation raises the possibility that polychrome bowls were made by fewer numbers of potters who worked with an increasingly secretive body of decorative and technological knowledge. The project will address three key questions: Where were iconographic-style pots produced? Were these containers produced by specialists? And did the shift from geometric- to iconographic-style involve changes in the materialization of social status and prestige?
Dr. Scott Van Keuren will conduct excavations at Fourmile and Pinedale ruins, two villages in the drainage dating to the period when iconographic-style pottery was first manufactured. Both were possible pottery production centers but have not been extensively studied. Analyses of chemical composition and petrography will first resolve critical questions about where these pots were produced. Measures of micro-scale technological and decorative variability (e.g., the sequence of paint brushstroke application, mineral paint recipes) will then be used to examine how crafting-knowledge was circulated, reproduced, and imitated among fourteenth century potters. The project data will ultimately address the broader relationship between craft specialization and emergent social inequality, a topic of particular concern to scholars interested in the development of political complexity in prehistoric societies.
In addition to addressing timely issues in Pueblo prehistory, the project will develop education activities and public outreach to serve both the Native and non-Native American groups who reside in the rural landscapes of the project area. Dr. Van Keuren will train teams of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to conduct both laboratory analyses and fieldwork. He and his students will develop community outreach programs that promote local stewardship and preservation of the heavily-looted archaeological resources in this region. In conjunction with site tours, public presentations, and other opportunities for dialogue, the project will expand current efforts to translate scientific findings to diverse audiences and engage local communities and tribal groups in research and preservation archaeology. The results of the project will be widely disseminated through a project website (www-rcf.usc.edu/~vankeure/SHAP/SHAP_main.htm), collaborative papers and presentations by researchers and students, and a comprehensive project report.
