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Preface:AProfessionalandPersonalViewofCharlesC.KolbCHAPTERNOVEMBER2014

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Social Dynamics of Ceramic Analysis:

New Techniques and Interpretations

Papers in Honour of Charles C. Kolb

Edited by

Sandra L. Lpez Varela

BAR International Series 26832014

Published by

ArchaeopressPublishers of British Archaeological ReportsGordon House276 Banbury RoadOxford OX2 7EDEnglandbar@archaeopress.comwww.archaeopress.com

BAR S2683

Social Dynamics of Ceramic Analysis: New Techniques and Interpretations Papers in Honour of Charles C. Kolb

Archaeopress and the individual authors 2014

ISBN 978 1 4073 1329 0

Printed in England by CMP (UK) Ltd

All BAR titles are available from:

Hadrian Books Ltd122 Banbury RoadOxfordOX2 7BPEnglandwww.hadrianbooks.co.uk

The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com

iCONTENTS

PREFACE A professional and personal view of Charles C. Kolb .................................................................................... 1 Dean E. Arnold

CHAPTER 1. Ceramic Ecology XXVII: Celebrating more than a Quarter Century of Ceramic Ecology ........................ 4 Sandra L. Lpez Varela, Dean E. Arnold, and Christopher A. Pool

CHAPTER 2. Cross-Cultural Ceramic Analysis: Albania and Yucatn in the Keck Lab at Millsaps College ............... 13 Michael L. Galaty, George J. Bey III, and Timothy J. Ward

CHAPTER 3. Pottery, People, and pXRF: Toward the Development of Compositional Profiles for Southeast Mesoamerican Ceramics .................................................................................................................................................. 22 David Rafael McCormick and E. Christian Wells

CHAPTER 4. The Conundrum of Volcanic Ash in the Maya Lowlands, an Essay in Honor of Charlie Kolb and International and Interdisciplinary Ceramic Ecology ...................................................................................................... 36 Anabel Ford

CHAPTER 5. Investigating the Production and Circulation of Pottery Vessels in Peripheral Tikal during the Classic Period ............................................................................................................................................................................... 50 Kirk Damon Straight

CHAPTER 6. Of Polychrome and Politics in Southern Veracruz, Mexico ..................................................................... 64 Philip J. Arnold III

CHAPTER 7. Building Landscapes of Memory with Pots: hermeneutic Expressions of Tlaloc in a Festivity of the Valley of Morelos, Mexico .............................................................................................................................................. 75 Sandra L. Lpez Varela and Daniel Aguilar Escobar

CHAPTER 8. Using Traditional Pottery as a Tool for Strengthening Local Cultural Identity in Poland ........................ 87 Aleksandra Wierucka and Magdalena Sacha

CHAPTER 9. Clay Griddles, Analytical Techniques, and Heritage: an ethnoarchaeological Perspective of Economic Development Policies in Mexico ..................................................................................................................................... 95 Sandra L. Lpez Varela

1PREFACE A professional and personal view of Charles C. Kolb

Dean E. Arnold The Field Museum, Chicago

I first met Charlie in an informal context at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meeting in Seattle in 1968, when we were both graduate students. This encounter sealed our mutual interest in ceramics with a pleasant meal together at a restaurant on Puget Sound. At the time, we were both job-hunting, and I suggested that he apply for the position at Bryn Mawr, a post to which he was ultimately appointed. In retrospect, this was the seminal format of the Ceramic Ecology sessions many years later, networking to discuss ceramics, going out for dinner with like-minded colleagues, and helping others. Since that first meeting, Charles C. Kolbs contribution to ceramic studies has been relentless and indefatigable with massive inputs of energy to organize Ceramic Ecology, an international and interdisciplinary symposium,

organized for the 1986 American Anthropological Association meeting to honor Frederick R. Matson (Kolb and Lackey 1988), a foundational symposium that continued with the same theme for more than two-and-one half decades.

Personally, these Ceramic Ecology sessions have been critical for me because through it, I have learned about the research of many colleagues, almost all of whom I would have never known had it not been for their participation in its sessions. Indeed, there is no such formal opportunity at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), the organization to which most of us belong. Although I knew fewer people at the AAA than the SAA, attending the AAA provided more

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2advantages for me because being at a small liberal arts college, I taught across the four sub-fields of anthropology, and I needed to expose myself to the breadth of the field, and peruse new books that were only available at its meetings. Further, my professional position was outside of the networks of information, influence, and power in archaeology. I felt this often at professional meetings, even though my excellent students, cordial colleagues, and the intellectual holism of my life at Wheaton gave me great personal satisfaction.

Research-wise, I was also out-of-the-loop because of limited travel funds, and I felt the exclusion of being outside most of the networks in my field. I suspect that I am not alone in this, and that there are many scholars like me. The Ceramic Ecology sessions allowed me to plug into networks and relationships with genuinely nice people who were interested in the same topics. Consequently, I participated regularly in the Ceramic Ecology sessions, not necessarily because I wanted to contribute a paper to get my way paid to the meeting, but because I wanted to maintain contact with other like-minded colleagues, and build relationships with them. The Ceramic Ecology session was like home to me, the place where I already knew many scholars, learned about their research, and developed new relationships with those I did not know. It was also a personal and professional anchor for me in the vast impersonal, but tightly scheduled chaos of a national meeting with thousands of participants.

Based on the breadth of Charlies experience, the Ceramic Ecology sessions have fostered several kinds of professional networks. First, there are those formed among graduate students and are the strongest between those of the same mentor, such as Charlies Penn State network of fellow graduate students. These are reified and strengthened through time with continued personal contact at professional meetings. Second, there are the networks of those who work together on the same projects in the field. When archaeologists and students return to the same field setting year after year, their relationships are carried forward into professional meetings and solidified. Charles Kolb has continuing relationships with those archaeologists who worked with him in the Valley of Mexico, in Pennsylvania, in Africa, and in Afghanistan. A third kind of network is formed through employment. Charlie participated in networks with colleagues and former students during his 24 years of teaching at Penn States University Park and Erie campuses, at Bryn Mawr, and at Mercyhurst College. His work during the twenty-three years at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) provided even more personal relationships and networks. For more than two decades, he knew the names of those who applied for NEH grants in ceramic studies, and those who had received them. Finally, there are the networks that advanced the cause of ceramic studies that resulted from the Ceramic Ecology

sessions themselves. As a result, Charles Kolb has become the most critical node of the network of ceramic specialists in archaeology.

There is another side to Charles Kolb, his unique ability to synthesize a vast amount of information, and remember individual contributions and their authors. He belongs to every scientific organization imaginable that involves ceramics and reads their journals. He regularly distilled papers from the AAA, SAA, and other meetings for the Society for Archaeological Sciences Bulletin, La Tinaja: A Newsletter of Archaeological Ceramics, and the Joint Newsletter of the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group and the Ceramic Petrology Group in the UK.

As much as we have tried to honor Charles Kolb with this volume, it is not possible to do justice to his accomplishments in education, government, and research, as exemplified in his curriculum vitae of more than one hundred single-spaced pages. From those pages, it is possible to extract his research interests in the archaeology of North America, Mesoamerica, and central Asia. Much of his experience, that is seldom, if ever, seen in the archaeological community, is demonstrated by his writing research articles, editing and reviewing a massive number of books, and authoring encyclopedia articles. An incredible bibliographic mind, Charlies memory for sites, scholars, and bibliographic sources outshines most of us. Further, Charlies print reviews of books for the American Library Associations review system, known by most of us as the Choice-cards, and those in various other scholarly journals and newsletters have kept him in touch with the latest research in the field.

The regular and persistent anonymous peer reviews of journal articles, scholarly books (N = 589!), and NSF grants exposed him to cutting-edge research in the field, along with the names of the scholars that were doing it. He has also done over forty reviews of individuals for promotion and tenure. His reviewing skill is second to none. Some years back, I received two anonymous prepublication reviews of a new book-length manuscript that I had submitted to the University Press of Colorado. One review was a book in itself: thirteen-and-one-half single-spaced pages of editing issues, constructive critique, and suggestions for articles and books that I had missed in the typescript. The stark contrast between this review and the second anonymous review was like the difference between day and night. Having known Charlie for 40 years at that point, I recognized the scholarly care, bibliographic richness, analytical skill, and an eye for detail that are all too rare among scholars today. The so-called anonymous review had Charlie Kolb written all over it. I confronted him several months later about it and he remarked with a wry smile that he seemed to remember doing such a review. He does more of this kind of

Social Dynamics of Ceramic Analysis: New Techniques and Interpretations

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3anonymous reviewing than many of us are aware, and he often works behind the scenes, making him one of the most implicitly powerful and influential scholars in ceramic studies today. Because of Charlies work as a reviewer, his participation in so many networks, and his work at NEH, he knew about the younger scholars in the field. He cultivated relationships with them, put them on the ceramic ecology list, encouraging them to present a paper in the symposium, or asking them to be discussants for the session. This was a critical opportunity for them to expose their research to the rest of us, and provide a key component for their socialization into a ready-made network of professionals engaged in ceramic studies.

In summary, Charlies seemingly limitless energy in reviewing, his participation in networks with other scholars studying ceramics, and his co-founding and cultivating the ceramic ecology symposium has produced critical and unprecedented contributions to knowledge about ceramics, and their role in anthropology and archaeology. If the most important knowledge is embedded and embodied in human beings, as Einstein is attributed to have said, then understanding the sociology of that knowledge is critical for the advancement of science. In this light, Charlies position was foundational and crucial in ceramic studies. Charles Kolb maintained the ceramic ecology network for more than 25 years, systematically had a social strategy to bring new scholars into it, and worked tirelessly for it to happen. There may be those who others identify as more powerful and influential in ceramic studies, but from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge, Charlie Kolb was the critical node in the ongoing network that brought scholars in ceramics together for more than a quarter of a century.

References Cited

Kolb, Charles C., and Louana M. Lackey 1988 A Pot for all Reasons: Ceramic Ecology revisited. Papers Dedicated to Frederick R. Matson. Philadelphia: A special Publication of Ceramica de Cultura Maya.

Dean E. Arnold: Preface

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