Ceramic Production and Exchange among the Virgin Anasazi, 30 Years Later

Abstract

At the 1988 SAA annual meeting in Phoenix, Margaret Lyneis presented a paper with the title Ceramic Production and Exchange among the Virgin Anasazi. In that paper, she presented evidence that much of the pottery found on archaeological sites in the Moapa Valley of southeastern Nevada was in fact produced 70–100 km to the east. This pottery was made from distinctive raw materials found near the north rim of the western Grand Canyon. That 1988 SAA paper inspired much subsequent research, including my doctoral dissertation, which examined ceramic distributions across the western part of the Virgin region. In this paper, I update and expand on my earlier study. This analysis adds detail to Lyneis's original arguments, but demonstrates that she was largely correct. From about AD. 1050–1125, small-scale Virgin region settlements were linked by intensive ceramic exchange networks that crossed long distances and rugged terrain.

En la conferencia anual de la SAA del 1988 en Phoenix, Margaret Lyneis presentó una ponencia titulada Producción e Intercambio de Cerámica entre las Virgin Anasazi. En esa presentación, ella aportó evidencias para demonstrar que una mayor parte de la cerámica encontrada en los asentamientos arqueológicos del valle de Moapa, sureste de Nevada, fue en realidad producida 70–100 kilómetros más al este. Esta cerámica fue producida con base a materias primas distintivas que se encuentran en las mesas ubicadas al norte del Gran Cañón occidental. Esta presentación en la conferencia de la SAA en el 1988 inspiró muchas investigaciones subsecuentes, incluso mi disertación doctoral, que examinó las distribuciones cerámicas en la zona occidental de la región Virgin. En este artículo, actualizo y desarrollo mi estudio anterior. Este análisis agrega detalles a los argumentos originales de Lyneis, mientras demuestra que ella estaba ampliamente en lo correcto. Entre aproximadamente 1050–1125 d.C., los pequeños asentamientos de la región Virgin fueron interconectados por el medio de redes intensivas de intercambio de cerámica, que cruzaron distancias largas y terrenos accidentados.

KEYWORDS:

• Ancestral Pueblo
• Virgin region
• Ceramic production
• ceramic distributions
• Arizona Strip
• Moapa Valley
• Moapa Gray Ware
• Shivwits Ware

Acknowledgments

I use analysis techniques in this paper similar to ones used in my doctoral dissertation, but with much more data included, and I reach similar conclusions. Though it was a long time ago, I should acknowledge my dissertation committee, Katherine Spielmann, Keith Kintigh, Barbara Stark, and Margaret Lyneis, for the help they gave in formulating my analysis methods and ways of thinking about Virgin region ceramic exchange, as well as exchange systems in general. Subsequently, many conversations with colleagues interested in Virgin region ceramic exchange, especially Margaret Lyneis, Karen Harry and Sachiko Sakai, have also influenced my thinking. I generated most of the figures in this paper in R, using several open source packages including ggpolot2 (Wickham 2016), ggtern (Hamilton and Ferry 2018), and gstat (Gräler et al. 2016; Pebesma 2004). I also want to thank several people who helped more directly with aspects of this paper. Robert Bischoff wrote the original versions of the R scripts that generated the maps in Figures 1 and 4, and he took some of the photographs included in Figure 2. Danny Perez and Marion Forest translated the abstract into Spanish. Margaret Lyneis's unpublished 1988 SAA paper is in the UNLV library; Peter Michel, the Director of Special Collections and Archives granted permission to include it in the supplementary material. Finally, I want to thank the editors of this special issue, Karen Harry and Sachiko Sakai, as well as Helen Fairley and one anonymous reviewer, for comments that helped me improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

James R. Allison http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0706-8871