This useful book is a compendium of the results of scientific analyses of the composition of archaeological ceramics and clays. The authors use their data to interpret specific aspects of indigenous cultures and histories across much of South America. The book represents 30 years of meticulous fieldwork and laboratory analysis.
The volume is in many ways a testimony to the ongoing, dedicated work of the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR). The importance of this continuity is illustrated in several ways. Individual datasets are directly comparable; therefore, a wide variety of samples from different contexts become available for interpretation. Over the history of the laboratory, the editors have counted more than 100,000 samples of pottery and clays, of which 6,000 were taken from South America. Archaeologists cannot often make the claim to work with “big data,” but these authors base their conclusions on strong empirical foundations. A multi-decade perspective on local cultural, geographic, and environmental relationships, built through decades of fieldwork in a single region, can provide unexpected insight into that context. Likewise, the authors’ collective experience with instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) yields insights on how the goals, protocols, and interpretations of the method have changed over time.
The geographic range is broad but focuses on Peru, especially the coast. This is hardly surprising, and the expansion of the review to the northern Andes, Argentina, Chile, and even Amazonian Brazil is welcome. The geographic profile of the contributions parallels the history of research in South America. Although ceramics studies have a long tenure on the Peruvian coast, older ceramic traditions are now known from several locations around South America.
The authors approach a variety of questions. Such theoretical unity that emerges in the volume is perhaps the result of a common outlook on the archaeological record that results from the communication between methodological experts and the archaeologists who are local experts. If this volume is taken as a product of this kind of interaction, it is worth thinking about how to build and maintain such relationships. As a non-specialist, I appreciated that the methods were explained clearly in the opening chapters, while the particular strengths and weaknesses in each study were also detailed.
Research groups have different goals. For example, Lippi and Gudiño (Chapter 3) argue that local Ecuadorean potters made Inca pottery according to imperial standards. Falabella and colleagues (Chapter 16) suggest that although La Granja in central Chile was a center for ritual activities that included the use of hallucinogens, it may not have drawn participants from beyond its region. Neves and colleagues (Chapter 22) argue that the regional systems of exchange in the Amazon that are known from historical and ethnographic sources have origins almost 1,000 years older than European colonization.
The book is well produced, with references gathered at the end of the volume, a useful index, and clear charts and photographs. The large format serves the subject well, with room for several photographs side by side, or in a few cases, large charts that organize numerical data. Bringing many examples together under a single cover makes it easier to compare approaches, datasets, and conclusions. The book will probably be most useful for specialists, although it would certainly add depth and rigor to a study of pre-Columbian archaeology in South America.
This volume will serve admirably for many years to come as a reference for specialists, and as a way for others to appreciate how scientific methods enable archaeologists to make contributions to considerations of Latin American history over many centuries.
