Classification Systems with a Plot: Vessel Forms and Ceramic Typologies in the Spanish Atlantic

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Mar 2015

The majority of current Spanish ceramics studies rely heavily on a typology based on sherds from American excavations and museum collections. While decades of use and refinement have made this system invaluable for dating sites and recognizing trade patterns in the Americas, its focus on archaeological ceramic types does little to explain how individuals used and perceived their ceramics. I argue that using a vessel-based classification system will allow archaeologists to explore deeper questions regarding behavior and emic (user-ascribed) views of the objects recovered in excavations as well as provide a way of comparing Spanish and Spanish-American ceramic assemblages.

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Classification Systems with a Plot: Vessel Forms and Ceramic Typologies in the Spanish Atlantic

Classification Systems with a Plot: Vessel Forms and Ceramic Typologies in the Spanish Atlantic Kathryn L. Ness 0 ) Department of Archaeology, Boston University , 675 Commonwealth Ave, Suite 347, Boston, MA 02215 , USA The majority of current Spanish ceramics studies rely heavily on a typology based on sherds from American excavations and museum collections. While decades of use and refinement have made this system invaluable for dating sites and recognizing trade patterns in the Americas, its focus on archaeological ceramic types does little to explain how individuals used and perceived their ceramics. I argue that using a vessel-based classification system will allow archaeologists to explore deeper questions regarding behavior and emic (user-ascribed) views of the objects recovered in excavations as well as provide a way of comparing Spanish and Spanish-American ceramic assemblages. In early modern Spain, people were surrounded by pottery, ranging from tiles on fountains and walls to cups and plates on tables and bacines (chamber pots) in private areas. The plethora of Spanish names for these ceramics and the specificity of some of the terms indicate the importance of pottery in Spanish culture and daily life. Indeed, current documentary research has identified over 150 different Spanish terms for ceramics (Amores Carredano and Chisvert Jimnez 1993; Lister and Lister 1976; Ramos Palencia 2010; Ruiz Gil 1999). While some of these names represent broad categories, others are for specific and comparatively rare shapes, such as alizar, a type of rectangular tile used in corner angles of walls (Lister and Lister 1976). This detailed terminology indicates how much attention early modern Spaniards paid to ceramic forms. Spain; Florida; Spanish ceramics; Classification systems - The Spanish archaeological record further emphasizes the importance of ceramics, as they are the most commonly recovered artifacts. At a sixteenthto-eighteenth-century middle-class domestic site known as La Calle Corredera in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain (Fig. 1), for example, nearly 85 % of the nonorganic objects inventoried are ceramic. Despite noting the pervasiveness of ceramics and studying aspects such as provenience and ware type, archaeologists have yet to fully understand the social significance of pottery to early modern Spaniards and how these items were perceived within the broader framework of household objects and luxury goods. One possible reason for this problem is that scholars in Spain and the Americas approach this research in very different ways. In Spain, scholars focus on vessel forms while their American counterparts concentrate on archaeological ceramic types. This divergence reflects different views of archaeology on the two continents, as European archaeology is often closely allied to history while American archaeology is typically seen as a subfield of anthropology (Courtney 1999). Although both of these approaches have their strengths, the use of two different methods means that scholars are unable to compare the research being conducted on Spanish and Spanish-American sites. As a result, it is difficult to determine the extent to which Iberian cultural heritage continued to influence American cultural development long after the initial conquest. In this article, I discuss classification systems in historical archaeology as well as the current state of Spanish ceramic studies on both sides of the Atlantic. I also introduce a new approach that uses transatlantic data and Fig. 1 Map of eastern Andaluca showing Jerez de la Frontera and Cadiz highlights whole vessels rather than typological details to provide a different way to understand ceramics and to bridge this academic and geographic divide. Typologies and Classification Systems in Historical Archaeology Since the 1910s, American scholars have debated the best method for grouping artifacts. Initial attempts at creating classification systems focused on establishing ways of identifying objects chronologically or through descriptions of their physical characteristics, such as color and material (Rice 1987; Willey and Sabloff 1980). In the 1940s and 1950s, archaeologists began to debate whether such classification systems represented culturally salient or Breal^ categories that were Bdiscovered^ by the analysts or whether the groupings were arbitrary and imposed on the assemblage by the researcher (Ford 1954; Spaulding 1953). Related to this debate was the question of whether or not types could be identified objectively through methods such as statistical grouping (Spaulding 1953; Whallon 1972). Today, many argue that types represent real categories, either for the archaeologist or the past consumer, although they acknowledge that these categories might not denote explicitly recognized ideals from past cultures (Beaudry et al. 1983; Rice 1987). The classification system introduced in this article is an attempt to identify such historical perspectives, i (...truncated)


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Kathryn L. Ness. Classification Systems with a Plot: Vessel Forms and Ceramic Typologies in the Spanish Atlantic, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2015, pp. 309-333, Volume 19, Issue 2, DOI: 10.1007/s10761-015-0290-9