Sample of pottery sherds used in the study.

We are currently working with Dr. John Kantner, School for Advanced Research on a pilot project of prehistoric ancestral Puebloan ceramic sherds from a single 10th and 11th century community located in nothern New Mexico. Please see the abstract of the project by Dr. Kantner below. Sarah Cross ran the samples at the elemental facility lab at the Field Museum with Laure Dussubieux in May.

LA-ICPMS Analysis of Mineral Paint Geochemistry from an Ancestral Puebloan Community of Northwestern New Mexico

John Kantner

School for Advanced Research

Numerous archaeologists working on the prehistoric Puebloan Southwest have conducted geochemical analyses of ceramic pastes in order to reconstruct past systems of production, exchange, and consumption. Comparatively little research, in contrast, has examined the mineral paints, especially from early periods in Puebloan prehistory. Because mineral sources for the paints almost certainly differed from the oft-studied sources of clay for the ceramic bodies, geochemical analyses conducted so far may only be reconstructing part of the story of ceramic material culture. This study will examine 102 samples representing two different ceramic styles (Red Mesa black-on-white and Gallup black-on-white) of the 10th and 11th centuries AD, all of which were collected from a selection of households from a single prehistoric community in northwestern New Mexico (named "Blue J" by archaeologists) that experienced the development of a nearby pilgrimage center at Chaco Canyon. Using laser ablation inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS), geochemical characterization of the paints on each sherd sample will be compared across time and space. This will facilitate the reconstruction of how access to mineral paints changed over time and was correlated with stylistic change, and it will help to identify differing networks of exchange among households in a single community. The results will complement ongoing work on clay geochemistry from the same prehistoric community. And through comparison with similar work being conducted by Kevin Vaughn in the Nasca area of Peru, this study will contribute to an understanding of how emerging pilgrimage centers impact networks of production and exchange.