Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Material Culture in Ethnicity Identification

Materials recovered in archaeological contexts have the ability to shed light on the cultural groups which produced them. The reason is that most cultures have “norms” in which individual styles can serve to identify the individual societies which produced them and archaeologists use such “styles” to determine group affiliation. With such identifications it is then possible to reconstruct how individual cultural groups moved across space, interacted with other groups and how they changed over time.

However not infrequently identifying the relationship between material culture and group identification can be complicated and this doctoral dissertation project focuses on such a case. The goal is to further the ability to make matches of this type and the results should help in the development of better techniques to do so. The project focuses on what is termed the “Salado phenomenon” which refers to a group of pottery types which appear suddenly in the late prehistory of the US Southwest and appear to spread across multiple groups.

Because they are not associated with changes in other material objects in this case they seem unrelated to the geographical movement of cultural groups and the goal of this dissertation project is to gain insight into what causes such a cultural phenomenon. The project focuses on Salado ceramics which have been excavated from multiple archaeological sites and are housed in museum collections.

The project includes both chemical analyses which can provide insights into the geographic origin of ceramic pieces as well as analyses of ceramic shapes. The project develops new applications and practical implementations of theoretical concepts and analytical methods in archaeological research through this central case study. The approach developed in this work is relevant to examinations of similar material phenomena observed elsewhere in the world, where broadly distributed material patterns overlie cultural variability.

The project has provided training, research experience, and mentorship for undergraduate students through a departmental research apprenticeship program. The project was designed and carried out in continued conversation with the Tribal Historic Preservation Offices of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and Gila River Indian Community, in order to be responsive to and respectful of cultural concerns and preferences.

Compositional studies are conducted both at Arizona State University and through an NSF-supported internship program at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) Archaeometry Lab. Silhouette images of whole vessel profiles and measurements from archival sources are used to mathematically characterize and compare the shapes of ceramic vessels to understand the organization and structure of ceramic assemblages and assess the functional roles Salado vessels served within them.

By establishing empirical evidence for the provenance, production technology, and use of Salado ceramics this research provides a new perspective on the practical and social meanings of engagement with materials and practices and aids in reassessing previous explanatory models of the phenomenon at both local and regional scales. This dissertation research develops new applications and practical implementations of theoretical concepts and analytical methods in archaeological research through this central case study.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.