Dissertation

Asyèt yo, Ollas, and Vasijas: situating pottery production in the circum-Caribbean through a technological perspective

This dissertation takes a technological approach to ceramic production and provides a fine-grained view of the circum-Caribbean region.

Author: S. Casale
Date: 15 December 2022
Links: The publication in Open Access

It discusses the usefulness of the chaîne opératoire methodology, together with the community of practice theory, as models to potentially explore questions related to the boundedness and cultural relations of peoples during the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods. Each chapter tackles diverse aspects of the manufacturing process, from the procurement of the raw materials to the forming stage and provide different cases of how methodologies need to be tailored to answer specific research questions. Geochemical and petrographic analysis combined with macro and micro-observations of the ceramic materials from different sites in Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico clarify the human-environment interactions and socio-cultural aspects of communities in precolonial times, and during the colonial and postcolonial periods.