Making and Breaking Pots in the Chaco World

Abstract

Manufacture and movement of pottery has a complex and changing history in the ancestral pueblo region. By the time great houses were being built in the Chaco sphere, four wares were in use and some areas were supplying large quantities of pots to the sites in Chaco Canyon. Widespread stylistic trends indicate mechanisms of communication and shared ideals over a huge area. Ceramics are an index of how large quantities of everyday items were transported more than 60 km to Chaco. The similarity of source and form assemblages at small sites and great houses demonstrates the close link between the two kinds of sites. The scale and layout of great houses and layering in great mounds associated with them are suggestive of periodic events that are components of Renfrew"s model of central Chaco as the location of devotional events. Scrutiny of layer contents indicates that such events were variable, and that lithics and ceramics from a single geographic source seem to be independently transported. Different areas may have been represented differently at different events, but layers always retain some of their complex composition of sources.