Thoughts on Weeden Island pottery classification: the type-variety system (again)

ABSTRACT

The existing classification of Weeden Island pottery does not serve the needs of twenty-first-century archaeology and has long been in need of an overhaul. We propose that the type-variety classificatory system, used in the Southwestern US, the Maya region, and the Lower Mississippi valley, could be applied to Weeden Island ceramics. This robust hierarchical system classifies pottery into four nested units: varieties in types, types in ceramic groups, and groups in wares, ideally paste wares to facilitate incorporation of compositional data. In addition, higher-order units, ceramic system and ceramic sphere, are particularly useful for integrating the complexes of individual sites into larger regional syntheses, the basis for investigating intersite relations. We illustrate the classification, its principles and units, with hypothetical names of a subset of Weeden Island pottery from the McKeithen site in north Florida. Type-variety classification provides insights not only into the pottery from an individual site but also into that of a region (e.g., Weeden Island might be termed a ceramic sphere), and, most importantly, into the people who made and used the pottery.

KEYWORDS:

• Weeden Island
• pottery
• classification
• type-variety system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Weeden Island pottery from the McKeithen site is curated at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Notes

1 The ceramic group was not included in the Wheat-Gifford-Wasley taxonomy, in part because at that time the term group had another usage in the Southwest (Wheat et al. 1958:38). A similar unit was called the “type cluster,” but consisted of only a single type and its varieties. In Maya type-variety analysis, ceramic groups with multiple types are defined, but the type cluster is not used.

2 Note that “ceramic system,” as used by Sears (1960), refers to classification schemes (specifically the type-variety system as applied by Phillips [1958]), rather than to “system” as an integrative unit within type-variety.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prudence M. Rice

Prudence M. Rice retired in 2011 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Associate Vice Chancellor of Research. Her work has primarily addressed archaeological sites, pottery, and other artifacts in the Maya lowlands of Petén, Guatemala, with a digression to Colonial Andean southern Peru in the 1980s.

Neill J. Wallis

Neill J. Wallis is Associate Curator of Florida Archaeology and Bioarchaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida. His work is focused on the histories of ancient communities in Florida and adjacent regions, especially as revealed through archaeological pottery analysis.