The Origins of Southwestern Ceramic Containers: Women's Time Allocation and Economic Intensification

Abstract

In the Greater American Southwest, ceramic containers were not manufactured until A.D. 1, as much as fifteen hundred years after the appearance of the first cultigens and eight hundred years after the appearance of the first ceramic figurines. A model for pottery origins developed by James A. Brown is tested using Southwestern data. Pottery containers were produced in conjunction with increasing sedentism and a greater dependence on cultivated foods. Production of ceramic containers increased women's workloads and created scheduling conflicts with subsistence pursuits. Southwestern women began producing pottery when changing social and economic conditions made the increased costs of ceramic manufacture acceptable. Changes in processing and storage technology involving the use of ceramic vessels increased the yields from cultivated crops.