The demographic upheavals that altered the social landscape of the Southwest from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries forced peoples from diverse backgrounds to literally remake their worlds transformations in community, identity, and power that are only beginning to be understood through innovations in decorated ceramics. In addition to aesthetic changes that included new color schemes, new painting techniques, alterations in design, and a greater emphasis on iconographic imagery, some of the wares reflect a new production efficiency resulting from more specialized household and...

"Pottery and Practice" examines decorated pottery and its production in prehispanic New Mexico's Lower Rio Puerco area through the lens of practice theory. Arguing that social relations can be interpreted from the mundane practice of everyday life, Eckert shows how the relationship between ethnicity, migration, and ritual practice combined to create a complexly patterned material culture among residents of two fourteenth-century Pueblo villages. Focusing specifically on the social boundaries that existed between immigrant and local Pueblo groups, she argues that tensions between these groups...