Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Geography, Geology, and Anthropology

Abstract

The study of social interaction is often viewed within the context of material exchange in cultural anthropology. Tracing the pathways of artifacts from their origin of manufacture to their point of deposition reveals important patterns in the social construct of prehistoric societies. Previous archaeometric approaches, however, have been limited in their ability to source artifacts at fine spatial scales such as neighboring communities where the examination of interaction and exchange is most challenging. This study focused on an archaeometric method aimed at solving this problem through examination of two case studies. The first case study examines Ancestral Puebloan red ware pottery production in the American Southwest, which is commonly linked to manufacture in southeastern Utah. In the area known as the Mesa Verde Region, red clays of the Morrison Formation ubiquitously outcrop and red ware is found in high abundance, generally decreasing in occurrence to the east and south. However, identification of the specific loci of production has been problematic using traditional typologically based studies. By analyzing native clays, fired clays, and tempered-fired clays, the effects of firing and tempering were assessed. The results indicated that firing and tempering did not alter the compositional signature sufficiently to obscure the relationship between the native source clays and their fired or tempered-fired compliments in multivariate analysis. Next, a geostatistical model of the geochemistry of a pervasive mudstone was used to investigate the spatial continuity of elements across the landscape. The resulting interpolations were compared to the compositional patterning and cluster morphology of clay and prehistoric ceramics within principal components analysis (PCA). Application of the method known as the Spatio-compositional Approach revealed the inherent compositional patterning of geological source materials within PCA component space and was the key to understanding similar compositional patterns observed among prehistoric materials produced from similar source constituents. The study firmly established compositional relationships between prehistoric ceramics and native clays gathered from well-known contexts and is the first archaeometric study to establish provenance using this unique approach. Finally, the long-held axiom the Criterion of Abundance is tested. The results indicated that an assemblage of prehistoric ceramics recovered from one site compositionally matched clay from local contexts. The new provenance method presents archaeometrists with a very powerful and insightful tool for the investigation of interaction and exchange of red ware pottery across the American Southwest. In the second case study, the approach is similar to the first study; however, the use of geostatistical methods is expanded to include an algorithm that translates geochemical signatures into a map of provenance. The model is used to geographically illustrate the location of compositionally similar materials through identification of the comparable elemental signatures of locally available resource materials found in the landscape with the prehistoric material in question. A twelfth-century earthen plaster from an Ancestral Puebloan kiva structure is used as an example and demonstrates the applicability of the Spatio-compositional Approach in varying contexts. No previous work on the elemental characterization and analysis of prehistoric earthen plasters in the American Southwest have resulted in their provenance using the prescribed methodology. The results of the study indicated that earthen plaster materials were gathered from within local contexts and were used in the application of multiple earthen plaster coats in a prehistoric kiva structure. Lastly, portable X-RAY Fluorescence (pXRF) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass-Spectrometry (ICP-MS) techniques are compared. The results indicated that both analytical methods are suitable for sourcing analysis studies. In both case studies, provenance is established when geological source materials and the prehistoric artifacts manufactured from them are statistically and spatially complemented. This work bears important implications for provenance studies and offers insight into an archaeometric approach that couples spatial statistics, geostatistics, and applied Geographic Information Science (GISci) with traditional sourcing analysis techniques. This research opens the door to a new frontier in archaeometry and sheds new light on how the Ancestral Puebloan exploited the natural resources of the landscape around them.

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