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4 Late mississippian Pottery in the Alabama River valley The reviews of Late mississippian sites and chronology of the Alabama River valley in the previous chapters demonstrated the need for more excavations and a better means of ceramic analysis that does not rely on mutually exclusive and exhaustive typologies. The data collected from the pottery assemblages were selected to best reflect the series of decisions made by an individual potter during the process of ceramic manufacture. As both stephen Plog (1978; 1983) and Christopher Carr (1995) have pointed out, style is polythetic, and different forms of stylistic variation may be related to different social processes. With these concerns in mind, the ceramic analysis was conducted by recording a series of detectable stylistic attributes believed to be indicative of culturally conditioned choices in the pottery production process , including clay paste, vessel form, and decoration from individual sherds. The attributes were chosen because they are the best means of tracing the chaîne opératoire, defined as the culturally conditioned sequence of artifact production, enacted by Late mississippian potters (Leroi-Gourhan 1964). The recorded attributes subsume both technological and decorative style. following anthropological studies of technology and material culture, in crafting their vessels, potters followed a “technical style,”a culturally embedded set of techniques and practices that reflected deep symbolic and structural beliefs about how the world worked (Lechtmann 1977). As with any technology, cultural meaning is embodied in all aspects of the pottery production process, from functional considerations such as technical know-how required for clay resource selection and processing, to the manual skills in building pots, to the choices made in form and decoration (Lemonnier 1986). ethnoarchaeological studies have demonstrated that attributes related to both the production of ceramics, including paste composition, and decoration may be indicative of political and social alliances and organization (herbich 1987; Longacre and stark 1992; stark et al. 2000), but change in technical and decorative style need not go hand in hand. olivier Gosselain’s (1998; 2000) studies of relocated potters indicate that less visible aspects of 90 / Chapter 4 the production process, those not subject to social critique, were least likely to change. in these examples, vessel forming, which was typically done out of public view and difficult to spot in a finished product, was least likely to change. Decoration, clearly a much more visible aspect of ceramic production , was far more likely to change. in the present study, attributes are equivalent to variable states; thus, a flattened lip or a rounded lip on a bowl sherd are considered two different attributes.This led to a large data set in which each case represented a single sherd. in the analysis of those data, sherds were separated first into two vessel classes, jars and bowls.The variables collected from bowl sherds were subdivided further into two analyses. The set of variables characterizing bowl decoration subsumed multiple forms, while the other included attributes associated with rims of a specific bowl form,the cazuela.Cazuelas made up the overwhelming majority of the bowls in the ceramic assemblage. four sites had ceramic assemblages large enough to be included in an attribute analysis. fortunately, matthew’s Landing, Durant bend, bear Creek, and Kulumi are geographically distributed relatively evenly across the Alabama and lower Tallapoosa river valleys. This sample does not include a site with a ceramic assemblage composed primarily of moundville-related ceramics . none of the four mound sites from the upper Alabama have ceramic collections substantial enough to include in an attribute analysis. nonetheless , the assemblages at bear Creek, Durant bend, and Kulumi all include a substantial quantity of moundville-derived sherds, and a significant sample was entered into the attribute analysis. because of fundamental differences in vessel morphology and use wear patterns, bowl and jar forms are believed to have served two functional purposes (hally 1983; 1986). Globular jars have been interpreted as cooking and storage wares, while bowls are thought to have functioned in a serving capacity. fundamental differences inherent in these vessel forms meant that a separate set of attributes was recorded for each form class. bowl attributes were further divided into two separate analyses since numerous sherds were complete enough to collect one set of data or the other. if a sherd had both a discernible incised motif and a complete rim, it was included in both analyses. This was infrequent, as many of the rim forms were added as a single coil and were commonly separated from the body when the vessel broke...

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