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Ceramic Petrography as a Technique for Documenting Cultural Interaction: An Example from the Upper Mississippi Valley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

James B. Stoltman
James B. Stoltman*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706
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Abstract

The petrographic identification of ceramic tempers has long been known to be a fruitful line of inquiry for investigating intersite and interregional cultural interaction. By applying point-counting procedures to the recording of natural as well as humanly added mineral inclusions in ceramic thin sections, considerable power can be added to this traditionally qualitative technique. The effectiveness of this more quantitative approach in discriminating local from nonlocal vessels is demonstrated through a comparative analysis of two Middle Mississippian-contact sites in the upper Mississippi Valley region-Hartley Fort in northeast Iowa and the Fred Edwards site in southwest Wisconsin.

Résumé

Résumé

Desde hace mucho tiempo se ha reconocido la importancia de la identificación petrográfica de los desgrasantes cerámicos en la investigación de las relaciones culturales entre sitios y entre regiones. La técnica de identificación cualitativa tradicional puede mejorarse drasticamente si a ella se añode la técnica de “cuantificacion de puntos,” aplicable tanto a las inclusiones naturales como a las inclusiones minerales artiftcialmente incorporadas a la pasta cerámica que se observan en secciones delgadas. La eficacia del método cuantitativo queda demostrada al distinguir entre los recipientes localmente fabricados y los importados mediante el análisis comparativo de dos sitios tipo Mississipiano Medio (período de contacto): Hartley Fort, en el noreste de Iowa, y el sitio Fred Edwards en el suroeste de Wisconsin.

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Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 103 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1991

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References

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