Shaping Ceramic Research At The Maya Site Of Cuello, Belize

Traditional analyses of ceramics from Maya Lowland archaeological sites have focused on descriptive typologies to define site and regional chronologies. However, T. Patrick Culbert’s groundbreaking work on the ceramics of Tikal (1993) utilized vessel shapes, as well, involving an analytical system of two levels: shape classes and shapes. His systematized modal analysis and concentration on vessel-shape classes, in conjunction with a focus on the importance of deposit types and site-formation processes, revolutionized what ceramics can tell us about prehistoric Maya behavior. The same approach was applied to the research on the Cuello ceramics presented here to gain a better understanding of the behavior associated with ceramic-vessel usage during the Preclassic period at this northern Belize site. The primary function of most ceramic analyses in archaeology is to develop a ceramic sequence both to provide a time line for dating deposits within a site and to compare the site’s chronological history with that of others in the region (Gifford 1976; Willey et al. 1967). During his fifteen years of ceramic research at Tikal, Culbert (1993) not only established an excellent Tikal ceramic sequence (Table 1) but also demonstrated the utility of employing three independent but crosscutting systems of classification for the pottery. The first system he used was a traditional type/variety analysis. However, as is the case from many excavated contexts, surface preservation of sherds was so poor as to limit the usefulness of a classificatory system based on surface treatment. The second approach involved the visual inspection of pastes. Although it was technically unsophisticated, this approach often demonstrated correlations with ceramic types or shapes—or, in some cases, it proved to be temporally diagnostic. The third system, an analysis of vessel shapes (Culbert 1993), has had a far greater and more lasting impact on subsequent ceramic analyses; it has also expanded the kinds of questions that can be answered beyond the temporal and stylistic to include social and behavioral variation in the prehistoric record. Finally, and in conjunction with these three approaches, Culbert carefully defined the kinds of deposits from which the ceramics came—one of the first attempts in which a ceramicist recognized that the sources of ceramics, and archaeological-site-formation processes, are important considerations for the ceramicist. Culbert’s analysis of Tikal vessel shapes involves an analytical system of two levels: shape classes and shapes. Shape classes are major divisions based on the size of the vessel, body proportions, and the kind of orifice, and they often shows a strong correlation with function, such as the traditional classification of plates, dishes, and bowls. Shapes are subdivisions of shape classes, differentiated by wall or neck shape and modifications such as ridges or flanges. They are less tied to the function of the vessel and change more rapidly through time than the more encompassing shape classes. In quantifying these shape classes, Culbert found it additionally useful to breakdown his analysis into four major shape categories: wide-mouth jars, narrow-mouth jars, large-capacity bowls, and serving vessels (Table 2). The advantages of an analysis of vessel shapes were readily apparent for the large quantity of sherds produced by the Tikal Project excavations; further, shapes provided greater variation than types and changed more rapidly through time. For example, minor changes in lip shape and decoration of