Renewing the ‘Search for Structure’ addresses the theoretical and methodological imperatives involved in (re)integrating descriptive, structural, and compositional analytical methods in a series of contributions from a diverse group of experts in archaeological pottery. Drawing on the life’s work of materials scientist Cyril Stanley Smith (The Search For Structure, MIT Press, 1981), a pioneering materials scientist who brought an important focus on structure to studies of a variety of archaeological materials, the contributors focus on those forms of analysis which investigate structural characteristics of ceramics and the methodologies that link such structural characteristics with the typological and compositional data that compose the majority of evidence in contemporary ceramic analyses. The chapters include essays organized into two sections: the first focuses on how the practices of ceramic production and the structures they generate enable inferences about the social relations between producers and consumers of pottery; and the second focuses on the role structure plays in the refraction and maintenance of different forms of social grouping and identity. These two themes serve as orienting foci for a broad set of heuristic and technical tools that have the potential to alter how archaeologists extract and identify the social information captured in the multifarious properties of pottery and transform contemporary understandings of the different roles ceramics played in past societies.

This introduction to the volume examines how the essential distinction in ceramic investigation between “structural” and “compositional” data has historically provided a framework for situating various analyses, a guiding heuristic distinction, even as the analytical capabilities for the detection and interpretation of ceramic properties have expanded. It traces the co-development of these approaches and their related analytical instrumentations in the early to mid-twentieth century, as well as their gradually diverging trajectories from the latter part of the century to today. The recent trend toward compositional, and especially geochemical, study is critically evaluated in light of important developments in the anthropology of technology and the accumulated archaeological research on craft production and potting practices. In contrast to studies relying solely on compositional attributes, the introduction outlines an integrated approach that combines elemental data with information pertaining to paste preparation, formation, decoration, and firing techniques in an anthropological effort to delineate the socioeconomic, learning, and political aspects of specific pottery industries. The authors argue that the inclusion of “structural” data is indispensable to forming a systematic understanding of ceramic production across geographies, political economies, and craft traditions. Drawing on their work with the MAE (Making of Ancient Eurasia) Project, they review how multi-scalar digital radiographic analysis has influenced their thinking about both ceramic structure and composition, and they demonstrate how the macro- and micro-scale variation revealed in ceramic fabrics and formation techniques has led them to call into question the treatment of structure and composition as two discrete domains of analytical characterization. Instead, a perspective that views each of these evidentiary domains as deeply entangled perspectives on the constitution of ancient pottery and pottery-making is presented. As a general introduction, this chapter also situates the volume within current research on ceramics more generally, and the multi-scalar structural analysis of pottery in particular, crystalizing several lines of recent scholarly interest. Finally, the essay provides a roadmap for the book, noting the various conceptual threads that run through different contributions and pointing the reader toward critical points of convergence and departure from conventional wisdom in our understanding of ceramic analysis.

Clay preparation techniques are among the most conservative elements of pottery production traditions. Variation in these techniques can indicate diversity in social relations of craft learning and labor, or adaptation to inconsistencies in raw materials. Describing strategies for clay preparation can therefore yield an important perspective on the social contexts of production. Yet, the finished and fired structure of pottery can mask or destroy evidence for clay preparation techniques. Conventional petrographic or other textural analyses of ceramic fabrics can provide useful information on only a fraction of the original paste components. These findings however, are enhanced when complemented with a range of analytical procedures that compare pottery to the raw clays from their respective sites. In this case, a large sample of potsherds selected from seven Early Bronze Age sites in the Eastern Caucasus was imaged using xeroradiography to evaluate textural contrasts. These differences were further examined using microscopy, SEM-EDS, and INAA. Clay samples from each site were also evaluated in terms of texture, mechanical properties and composition using similar analyses. The use of these combined and multi-scalar analyses reveals significant diversity in clay preparation strategies between the sites in the study. In addition, the findings suggest greater diversity in clay preparation within a single, widely distributed pottery type called Kura-Araxes ware, than between this pottery type and another contemporary type known as Velikent Fine ware. Both types of pottery could have been produced together at the sites where they are found, a conclusion with far-reaching implications for how we interpret interaction and mobility between communities.

Pottery assemblages from two neighboring Chaco-period (AD 1050-1130) communities in west-central New Mexico are used to explore several different components of community organization. These communities are located at the interface of two of the American Southwest’s primary archaeological culture areas—Mogollon and Pueblo—and pottery assemblages include vessels attributed to both. The primary questions asked of these assemblages include whether they were locally produced by co-residing groups of people who came from different regions, and whether those peoples continued to reproduce vessels using the conventions of their homelands. Decorated pottery is used to assess the contemporaneity and attributes of the unpainted pottery assemblage, and coil thickness and indentation frequency are used to assess if manufacturing traditions differ by wares attributed to each culture area. Thickness and apparent porosity measures are used to explore vessel function, and oxidation analyses are used to assess clays used in vessel manufacture. Combined, these analyses suggest that groups from two distinct manufacturing traditions co-resided within these communities, that they manufactured unpainted jars using the conventions of their areas of origin, and that they continued to do so throughout the histories of these communities. These long-lasting traditions of manufacture served to reproduce an element of difference in items used daily, while larger scales of social action signal greater communal unity; both processes are argued to be accurate reflections and embodiments of social relations.

Majiayao storage vessels are an important feature in Neolithic burials in Northwest China. An increase in the number of vessels between the Banshan and Machang phases of the Majiayao culture demonstrates a change in the value and production processes used to manufacture these vessels. We use experimental archaeology and radiography in order to examine changes in their mode of production.

In this chapter we discuss the elaboration of radiographic pottery analysis as a structure-oriented technique with an emphasis on its newer iterations in digital radiography (DR) and X-ray computed tomography (XCT). Our focus is to present several important alterations to our thinking about “structural” and “compositional” data in archaeometric and archaeological theory that have been provoked by our interaction with DR and XCT analysis over the last ten years. In so doing, we hope to show how a renewed focus on ceramic structure can bring equal weight to structure and composition in pottery analysis, and facilitate a program of research that emphasizes the social import of the vessel as product, tool, and technology. We first briefly review methods of DR and XCT analysis, as well as their common applications and requirements in the study of archaeological pottery. We then provide a few specific examples of the secondary data produced by radiographic and tomographic imaging during the course of our work with assemblages from three distinct Eurasian locales incorporating diverse research questions. Finally, we offer insights from our radiographic research in order to contribute to the more general discussion about structure and composition that occupies this volume.

Clay vessels can be made with a wide variety of distinct forming techniques or combinations of two or more techniques. The most common ways of making pots during the Cretan Bronze Age were wheel-throwing and coiling. Thanks to X-ray studies, macroscopic inspection, and experimental archaeology, “wheel-coiling” – a technique that combines hand-building and wheel-throwing techniques at different stages of the forming process – has recently been recognized as an additional popular forming technique. Tracing the emergence and continuity of these different techniques allows us to put forward hypotheses about their relationship to each other, their socio-political meaning, and the organization of pottery production more generally. It will be demonstrated that wheel-coiling is a technique that emerged at the same time as wheel-throwing and continued to be utilized throughout the Bronze Age. Unlike wheel-throwing, wheel-coiling was employed for the full range of vessels and was uniquely adapted to gain the greatest possible advantage from the slowly revolving potter’s wheel. While wheel-based techniques have frequently been linked to the emergence of the Cretan palaces and the desire of elites to enhance their social standing through provision of specialized craft products, the existence of a highly specialized, independent pottery production since the Final Neolithic undermines this popular assumption.

Multi-dimensional and multi-scalar analyses of ceramic structure can yield important information about the manufacturing processes employed in their production. The identification of such practices have allowed archaeologists to make inferences about the technological and social choices people in the past may have made in producing material culture, and how those choices may have acted as statements of both individual and group identity. Within such analysis, the concept of “communities of practice, originally developed as a theory of social learning, may be particularly helpful for understanding the formation of community identities through craft production. Using a chaîne opératoire approach informed by the concept of “communities of practice,” this chapter presents the results of a nested analytical study of prehistoric pottery-making practices from several communities along the Black Sea coast in order to interpret the emergence of shared pottery traditions across the region. This analysis suggests that from the end of the 4th to the early 3rd millennium BC a distinct and shared “Black Sea culture” developed across the region as a result of increased social interaction and in response to larger, interregional dynamics. This case illustrates how the integration of multi-scalar technological practice analysis with theories of craft production can identify patterns of social relations and identity in the past.

Open learning frameworks allow great variability in the way a specific task can be completed, while a closed learning framework allows little variation. Ethnographic observations indicate that there is a high degree of variability in the execution of tasks within the process of pottery manufacture, and that learning construction techniques requires more structure than learning decoration techniques. In this project, the consistency of the directionality (clockwise versus counterclockwise) of painted lines on polychrome vessels and coiled bases of corrugated pottery was studied to determine tolerance within an open or closed cultural learning framework, and the degree of openness. An experiment was carried out which linked directionality on pots with the laterality of the potter in an open system. These results were then compared with data from archaeological pots from sites in the Point of Pines area, east-central Arizona. Maverick Mountain, Point of Pines Polychrome, McDonald, and Point of Pines Corrugated ceramics were used to extrapolate artistic tolerance with degrees of variation within and between types.

Ceramic petrography makes it possible to investigate the chaîne opératoire, or series of actions and choices made during the production process of ceramic artifacts. Such structural analysis can help identify different material styles in ceramic groups that may have previously been seen as homogeneous. Using a case study from northwestern Syria, this chapter explores how ceramic petrography can move beyond typologies and provenience and begin to answer questions about specific economic practices, such as state control over the production of ceramic containers. During the late third millennium BC in northwestern Syria, the state of Ebla was powerful and had connections to other political and economic centers in the region. One type of ceramic container that is a marker for this period, and is directly associated with the state of Ebla, is called the Caliciform Ware cup. Many archaeologists characterize this ware as standardized and mass produced across the extent of the Ebla state. Ceramic petrography of painted Caliciform Ware from the Ghab, located within the territory of the Ebla state, indicates non-standardized production, despite the homogenous forms and decorative patterns. This study emphasizes the need to study ceramic structures across the political landscape in detail to fully understand processes of production and what that means for questions of state control.

Erin Hegberg and Philip Heintz use 19th century trends in the formation of New Mexican Hispanic and Pueblo ceramics to analyze the relationship between learning lineages, motor skills, and the production of social identity. While Hispanic pottery types have traditionally been treated as distinct from Pueblo wares, current understandings of the social basis of that distinction remain poor. In their essay, the authors turn the lens of structural analysis on these two types of ceramics that are often made with local clays and temper, and found at historic sites throughout the Spanish and Mexican territories. Drawing on previous research showing that formation techniques such as coiling, slab building, or molding are directly related to learning lineages and motor skills, they use medical X-ray fluoroscopy to compare the formation techniques of Hispanic and Pueblo ceramics as part of a more general analysis of social groupings and identities in Territorial New Mexico. Their results suggest that variations in Hispanic and Pueblo potting may lie at production foci other than the formation stage.

This concluding chapter provides historical and conceptual perspective on the frameworks, techniques, and sociocultural interpretation discussed in the preceding contributions. It offers an important contextualizing statement, situating ceramic analysis within the wider breadth of archaeological research and providing an understanding of what balanced structural and compositional ceramics analysis adds to the general sub-disciplinary debate. In closing the volume, it stresses what increased focus on structure brings to contemporary ceramic studies and directs future researchers to the most potentially productive research topics.