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Inferring Use-Life Mean and Distribution: A Pottery Ethnoarchaeological Case Study from Michoacán

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2022

Michael J. Shott Open the ORCID record for Michael J. Shott [Opens in a new window]
Michael J. Shott*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA (shott@uakron.edu)
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Abstract

Archaeologists see the value, if not the allure, of formation theory. Before inferring what happened in the past and why, we must know how the material record formed. Pottery is abundant and informative, therefore a common analytical subject. Understanding size and composition of ceramics assemblages requires formation theory, including knowledge of vessel use life. This fundamental quantity has two salient properties. The first—central tendency measured by mean or median—is widely acknowledged. Use life's second, equally important, property is the distribution of failure-age by specimen across assemblages. This article considers how and why both use-life properties affect size and composition of pottery assemblages. From a longitudinal ethnoarchaeology of household pottery in Michoacán, Mexico, it identifies vessel-size measures that correlate with use-life mean, and it demonstrates archaeologically innovative ways to characterize distributions that improve both analysis of assemblages and comparison between them.

Los arqueólogos reconocen el valor, si no la apelación, de la teoría de formación. Antes de inferir lo que pasó en el pasado o porqué, debemos saber cómo el registro material se formó. La alfarería es abundante y informativa, entonces un sujeto analítico popular. Se necesita la teoría de formación, incluso la vida-útil, para estudiar el tamaño y la composición de los conjuntos cerámicos. La vida-útil posee dos propiedades salientes. La primera —tendencia central como promedio o número medio— se reconoce. La segunda, de importancia igual pero descuidada, es la distribución de edad de fracaso por especímene entre conjuntos. Aqui se considera cómo y porqué la vida-útil afecta los conjuntos cerámicos. A partir de indagaciónes etnoarqueológicas longitudinales de alfarería cotidiana en Michoacán, Mexico, se identifiquen medidas del tamaño de las vasijas que correlacionan con el promedio de la vida-útil, y se demuestran métodos innovadoros en contexto arqueológico para caracterizar las distribuciónes, todo que mejora el análisis de conjuntos y la comparación entre ellos.

Keywords

use-life meanuse-life distributionformation theorypositivismMichoacánpotterypromedio de vida-útildistribución de vida-útilteoría de formaciónpositivismoMichoacánalfarrería
Type
Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 87 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 794 - 815
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology

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References

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