Ceramic Profiles in the Western Mound at Awatovi, Northeastern Arizona

Bibliographic Data

ID2562835
AuthorsRobert F Burgh (Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, corresponding author)
Year1959
Volume25
Issue2
Pages184-202
Publication date1959-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Antiquity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7316 • E-ISSN: 2325-5064
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/277438
OpenAlexW2333677751
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited2

Excavations in the Western Mound at this prehistoric Hopi pueblo provide 13 adjacent columns of refuse in masonry rooms which yielded 21,569 painted sherds. Stratigraphic analysis of these ceramic profiles has resulted in a relative chronology of five color classes of locally made painted pottery which will serve as a control for future ceramic studies at the site. Black-onwhite, black-on-orange, and orange-paste polychrome were made from about A.r>. 1200 to 1300 when they were abruptly replaced by black-on-yellow and yellow-paste polychrome. The differences between trash deposited in rooms and that dumped in the open, the anomalies of sherd and vessel quantities, and the well documented nature of this large sherd collection make possible observations on the problems of stratigraphic interpretation. Numerical comparison of painted sherds with vessels restored from them demonstrates the hazards of interpretation based solely on limited sherd samples. The fact that one of the rooms produced a sequence exactly the reverse of the situation in the other 12 rooms emphasizes the need for more extensive testing in room blocks than in trash dumps. Restoration of vessels from sherds found at different levels in different rooms shows the inadequacy of chronological inference based on stratigraphic position of unassembled sherds

Archaeology · Chronology · Excavation · Geography · Polychrome · Pottery · Prehistory · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Natural History · Geology · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

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