Pots in Northern Patagonia: design characteristics, functionality and variability

FRANCHETTI, FERNANDO; SUGRAÑES, NURIA

Austin

Congreso; 79th Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting.; 2014

Many studies have attempted to establish the relationship between form and function in the ceramics of different times and places. For example, these efforts have helped to explain how ceramic technology has been used by highly mobile human foragers. The sample presented here provides data from three different museum collections. Technological and design characteristics reveal a wide range of form and style, distinguishing these assemblages from those recovered through archaeological investigation. These data reveal the complexity of technological developments over a 2000 period, and from this complexity new problems arise: we see differences in spatial distribution and density, and we see change in both the use and exchange of pots. Such complexity demands further investigation. While some vessel forms (like cooking or storage pots) might be well-suited to locations organized around collection, production and caching, other forms (like plates and jars) were recovered showing broader uses of ceramics. Finally, the diversity of non-local styles reveals that pots were exchanged through highland corridors, between disparate groups on either side of the Andes.