Dean E. Arnold

Field Museum of Natural History · Anthropology

This article introduces readers to my book "Maya Blue: Unlocking the Mysteries of an Ancient Pigment". The book summarizes ethnographic, archaeological, chemical, and material science research about Maya Blue over the last century from an anthropological perspective. This particular article is a slightly edited version of the introduction to the bo...

From the publisher's website (also available in Spanish, French, Russian, and Polish) with a link to the Table of Contents and Introduction. "One of the great technological achievements of the ancient Maya, Maya Blue is one the world’s most unusual ancient pigments. In Maya Blue, Dean E. Arnold offers a comprehensive history of its study for almost...

Dean E. Arnold takes readers on a journey into the Andes, recounting the adventures of his 1960s research in the village of Quinua, Peru. Arnold’s quest to understand how contemporary pottery production reflected current Quinua society as well as its ancient Inca and pre-Inca past is one of the earliest studies in what later became known as ethnoar...

Using a perspective of a period of more than forty years of study and reflection about pottery production and its changes in Ticul, Yucatán, México, this paper presents insights helpful in understanding the acceptance and rejection of innovations in the past. Using theoretical perspectives such as engagement theory, the chain operatoíre, feedback,...

Maya Potters’ Indigenous Knowledge uses engagement theory to describe the indigenous knowledge of traditional Maya potters in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico. In this illustrated narrative account, Dean E. Arnold examines crafts people’s knowledge, skills, engagement with natural and social environments, the raw materials they use for their craft, and their...

Based on fieldwork and reflection over a period of almost fifty years, Maya Potters’ Indigenous Knowledge utilizes engagement theory to describe the indigenous knowledge of traditional Maya potters in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico. In this heavily illustrated narrative account, Dean E. Arnold examines craftspeople’s knowledge and skills, their engagement...

This is a review of the book in Journal of Anthropological Research.

This is the first volume to bring together archaeology, ethnography, and art history in the analysis of pre-Columbian pottery. While previous research on ceramics has been divided among these three disciplines, this volume shows that integrating approaches provides new understandings of many different aspects of Ancient American societies. Contri...

Clay is the most malleable raw material used by many cultures across the world. Its fired product, ceramics, are commonly studied by archaeologists, art historians, and anthropologists. This introductory chapter describes the various perspectives and how these disciplines study the ceramics of ancient America and the cultures that produced them. Br...

By examining the remains of an abandoned potter's workshop on the edge of Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico, the paper reconstructs what can be known about it based upon analogies with the material signatures of the active workshops of nearby Ticul. The reconstruction identifies some of the activities carried out at the workshop, the materials and fabrication...

This is a book review.

Up until the tourist market and piped water forever changed the practice of making pottery in Ticul, potters’ raw materials came from sources in a unique socially-perceived and spatially-restricted landscape that served them well for at least a thousand years. Revealed by ethnographic research, potters’ traditional knowledge and utilization of thes...

Ancient ceramics are not self interpreting and understanding their meaning is the most central issue facing the archaeologists that study them. Some assume that compositional analysis by various methods can provide this meaning, whereas others assume that the notion of choice explains potters’ behavior. Both approaches, however, result in abstracti...

A tribute to Dr. Charles C. Kolb originally presented to the Ceramic Ecology Session at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Chicago, November, 2013.

This book traces the history of potters and their production units for more than four decades. As a follow up to 'Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution, it focuses on a narrative history of pottery making families and their production units, and how they have changed between 1965 and 2008. Again, household productio...

This paper explores the means by which potters in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico, materialized their social memory in the gremio festival to honor a ‘Black Christ.’ The gremio’s ‘Black Christ’ is associated with the emergence of a unique indigenous Yucatecan identity in the 17th century, but the gremio activities also materially express occupation, social...

Maya Blue, a nano-structured clay-organic complex of palygorskite and indigo, was used predominantly before the Spanish Conquest. It has fascinated chemists, material scientists, archaeologists and art historians for decades because it is resistant to the effect of acids, alkalis, and other reagents, and its rich color has persisted for centuries i...

This article from the ‘Classics Review’ section of the journal ‘ethnoarchaeology’ provides the back story and update for “Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process” published in 1985 and reprinted many times since then. That book built on the seminal article that I wrote for ‘Current Anthropology’ ten years earlier, and my responses to my critics there t...

One of the important assumptions of compositional analysis is that the elemental composition of an artifact reflects the source of the materials used to make it. Thus, pottery from a particular source will be chemically similar to the raw materials from that source. This “commonsense” assumption seems beyond dispute, but the fact that pottery is a...

This paper illustrates how different sections of pots are joined by potters in Mexico, Guatemala and among the ancient Incas. Potters in Ticul, Yucatan and Mexico join portions of vessels using moulding and large coils that are drawn up and thinned with a gourd scraper. Potters in the northern Valley of Guatemala also use large thick coils, but joi...

This book traces changes in the population of potters, procurement of raw materials, paste composition, forming, and firing of pottery in the community of Ticul, Yucatan from 1965-1997. Relating the changes to social change in the community, the book challenges several theories of ceramic production regarding the role of elites in control of resour...

Maya Blue is a colour that is more than a pigment; it had roles in status, ritual and performance, being daubed onto pots and people before sacrifice. Here researchers use experimental and historical evidence to discover how it was made, including direct scientific analysis of Maya Blue on a pot thrown into the sacred well at Chichén Itzá. The resu...

This paper compares fabrication times for three pottery forming techniques in Ticul, Yucatán, and discusses the factors that affect the choice of one technique over another. Because fabrication techniques are part of the adaptation of a community of potters for making vessels within the limits of local raw materials, efficiency of time is only one...

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment used on pottery, sculpture, and murals from the Preclassic to the Colonial period. Until the late 1960s, its composition was unknown, but chemists working in Spain, Belgium, Mexico, and the United States identified Maya Blue as a combination of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called attapu...

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment consisting of a clay-organic complex of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called attapulgite). Used on pottery, sculpture, and muralsfrom the Preclassic to Late Colonial periods largely in Mesoamerica, blue was the color of sacrifice and ritual. Did the palygorskite used to make Maya Blue co...

This paper reports some refinement in the Threshold Model for Ceramic Resources based on distance to ceramic resource from ethnographic pottery making communities (Arnold 1985). The refinements make the thresholds more objective than they were in the previous model and enable its more precise application for identifying local vs. non-local ceramic...

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment used on pottery, sculpture, and murals from the Preclassic to the Colonial period. Until the late 1960s, its composition was unknown, but chemists working in Spain, Belgium, Mexico, and the United States identified Maya Blue as a combination of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called a...

The abundant ethnohistorical information about the Inca empire provides an opportunity to compare these data with the archaeology of the Inca period in order to elucidate the realities of Inca state formation and its imperialistic expansion. One of the mechanisms of this expansion was the utilization of colonists (mitimaes) who were removed from mo...

This is an early version in Spanish of the article published in English ("The Materiality of Social Memory") in the journal "Ethnoarchaeology" in 2013. The article was translated by Eduardo Williams.

Although the chemical analyses of pottery (utilizing such techniques such as INAA) are commonly believed to reveal the provenance of pottery, the data from such analyses are really far removed from the behavior of potters and the society in which they live. Those who use these analyses employ terms such as 'source', 'reference group' and 'fingerpri...

This brief article is a book review of "The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies" by William K. Barnett and John Hoopes.

In the literature dealing with the development of ceramic specialization, paste uniformity has been suggested as a surrogate index of product standardization and the result of a more intensive level of specialization. More recently, the amount of paste variability has been seen as an indicator of different types of production organization. Ethnoarc...

Contemporary pottery and raw materials (N= 170) from three workshops in Ticul, Yucatán, were analysed by neutron activation to test the hypothesis that individual workshops that used their own clay sources could be identified by their pottery. Although the data failed to confirm the hypothesis, the results reinforced previous conclusions about the...

Whereas production organization and its changes affect ceramics and ceramic technology, the techniques of production may also have an effect on craft organization. This paper argues that the adoption of the fabrication technique of vertical-half molding has important implications for the organization of ceramic production, the identification of tha...

Neutron activation analysis has been employed to characterize ceramics and raw material samples from modern pottery-making communities. The original study focused on several villages in the central highlands of Guatemala. More recently, NAA data have been collected from communities in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, the northern Yucatan Peninsula, an...

This chapter is the Spanish translation of the chapter in English with the same name that was published in 1998.

This is a review of Phillip Arnold's important book "Domestic Ceramic Production and Spatial Organization. A Mexican Case Study in Ethnoarchaeology" by Philip J. Arnold III. Latin American Antiquity 4(3):297-299.

The notion of standardization in pottery production has been used as an indicator of ceramic specialization. Yet, this notion and the assumptions behind it are still largely untested ethnographically. This paper attempts to identify some factors that affect the standardization of ceramic vessel shapes in Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico. A sample of 448 ethn...

This chapter explores the role of ethnoarchaeology in archaeological interpretation that goes beyond direct historical analogy. It also argues that although patterns may be generalizations, they are not universals, and may account for a frequency of no more than 60%.

An earlier study (Rice 1977, 1978a) purportedly found compositional similarity between raw materials used by modern potters in the northern Valley of Guatemala and Formative period whiteware ceramics from sites in the valley, particularly the major highland center of Kaminaljuyu. The compositional similarity suggested that Formative whiteware was m...

Extensive earthworks in the form of fields, canals, mounds, and causeways have been reported for the tropical savannas in many areas of South America, but few such earthworks are known from the tropical forest habitat outside of these grasslands. This paper reports on the ditch-like earthworks at a remote site in the tropical forest of extreme NE B...

This article is the pre-publication copy of my review of Prudence Rice's important book on ceramic technology of 1987.

This article is a review of Smith's monograph on the ceramic sequence from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico.

This chapter is an introductory summary of the patterns of descent, residence, and learning patterns among potters in Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico up until 1988. A fuller, more complete treatment and summary of these data from 1965 to 2008 is treated in two subsequent books: "The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community." Univer...

In this study I explore the relationship of technological diversity and the viability of ceramic-producing communities. By comparing numbers and kinds of pastes, forming techniques, number of vessel shapes, and number of decorative techniques found in communities in three pottery making areas in Guatemala, Peru and Mexico, I suggest some trial gene...

This brief report describes the relationship between pottery making and aspects of the socio-cultural and environmental systems in a rural village and Honduras. It provides insight into the factors that led to the development and maintenance of the craft in that community. The first residents of the community arrived in the 1920s and began making p...

In order for ceramic compositional analysis to yield more than tentative attribution of ceramics to broad source areas, models of ceramic resource procurement and production will have to incorporate some of the acknowledged complexities of real-world ceramic production. In this paper, we discuss some experiments using artifically-mixed data sets de...

Extensive earthworks in the form of fields, canals, mounds, and causeways have been reported for the tropical savannas in many areas of South America, but few such earthworks are known from the tropical forest habitat outside of thesegrasslands. This paper reports on the ditch-like earthworks at a remote site in the tropical forest of extreme NE Bo...

In order for ceramic compositional analysis to yield more than tentative attribution of ceramics to broad source areas, models of ceramic resource procurement and production will have to incorporate some of the acknowledged complexities of real-world ceramic production. In this paper, we discuss some experiments using artificially-mixed data sets d...

This chapter summarizes the changes in pottery production and design that occurred in Ticul, Yucatan, between 1965 and 1984. These changes consist of change to a ball-bearing turntable, an enhancement of the traditional turntable that turns on a nail, and changes in vessel shapes that occurred over time. The population of potters, however, has chan...

Drawing upon the theoretical perspectives of systems theory, cybernetics and cultural ecology, and cross-cultural comparisons, the book contributes to explanations of the origin and evolution of ceramic production. An innovative approach to the archaeological interpretation of ceramics, this book is the only book on ceramic production that is not s...

Reina, Ruben E. and Robert Hill. The Traditional Pottery of Guatemala. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1978. 323 pp. 419 figures, 10 maps, 3 tables, 10 color plates. $35.Lackey, Louana M. The Pottery of Acatlán: A Changing Mexican Tradition. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. 164 pp. 18 color plates, 68 black and white photograp...

Although not described in the language of technical choice, this paper describes the technical choices in design behavior of four utilitarian vessels shapes (N = 172) made by potters in Quinua, Peru during a six-month period in 1967. Designs are described in terms of the field of design and design zones, and the kinds of designs that occur in each...

The community of potters is characterised by the number of stylistic correlates, including high frequencies of particular structures of decorative space and motif and band symmetry patterns. The high frequency patterns correspond to the basic structural principles that organise the community in the decorated pottery that they produce. The relations...

This chapter is an ethnographic description of indigenous pottery making in the Valley of Guatemala based on field work conducted between June and August, 1970. Pottery making in four Pokomam-speaking communities were studied extensively: Chinautla, Sacojito, and Durazno to the north of Guatemala City, and Mixco located to the west of Guatemala Cit...

This paper examines pottery production in three sub-dialect regions of the Central Pokomam (or Pokom) language in central Guatemala. One dialect area (Palin) has excellent agricultural land and makes no pottery. Another (Chinautla, Sacojito and Durazno region) has very poor agricultural land unsuited to anything except slash and burn agriculture an...

This article is a review of the late Kenneth Kensinger's book about the Cashinahua of Eastern Peru. The review was published in Man, the former name of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

This paper describes the contemporary clay mine at Hacienda Yo’ K’at, Yucatan, and documents the archaeological association of a restored sherd\-tool of Puuc slateware in a collapse tunnel of the mine. The shape of the sherd and its in situ position suggest that it was used to gathered clay in the mine during the period of A. D. 800-1000. The paper...

This paper describes the classification and characteristics of the types of maize in the Tzutujil-speaking community of San Pedro, La Laguna, Guatemala. It reveals the existence of different varieties based upon the micro-climates on the side of the San Pedro volcano, and various cultural characteristics such as storage duration, size of cob, and p...

This paper is the first formulation of probablisticgeneralizations about the relationships of pottery production and the environment that eventually became my book: "Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process". As with that volume, this paper argues that pottery is not totally plastic in the way that it reflects culture, but that it has significant relati...

The paper examines some of the interrelationships of environment and ceramic specialization in the area around the village of Quinua, Department of Ayacucho,Peru. The study reveals that agricultural land dependent on rainfall provides a significant limiting factor in the development of full-time ceramic specialization. Furthermore, the complex seri...

This article is a description of the mine in the cenote in Sacalum, Yucatán that was a significant source of attapulgite (now called palygorskite) used in the creation of Maya Blue. Resulting from mining a one meter deposit of the mineral, the size of the mine indicated that prior to 1968 (when these measurements were made), the Maya had removed 30...

ABSTRACTS Mineralogical analyses of clays, tempers and paints from contemporary sources in the vicinity of Quinua, Peru, were carried out by means of X‐ray diffraction, microscopic examination and physical separation. The data indicates that (1) there is a substantial amount of mineralogical variability in these materials, (2) the differences betwe...

"This paper shows the technical choices that potters in Quinua, Peru make in producing their pottery. Quinua potters use three distinct painted styles that are different and that seem to be tied to distinct parts of the community. Currently, pottery production appears to be largely tied to the tourist market. So, this work describes a vessels and a...

The emic cultural categories of pottery materials used by the community of potters in Ticul, Yucatan, were compared to the etic mineralogical analysis of these materials. The study reveals that there is a definite relationship between the cognitive ethnomineralogical system used by the community of potters in Ticul and the verbal, non-verbal, and m...