Genealogies and Juxtapositions: Traces of Potting Communities and Firing Facilities in Lake Titicaca Basin
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Genealogies and Juxtapositions: Traces of Potting Communities and Firing Facilities in Lake Titicaca Basin Andrew P. Roddick 1
& François
Cuynet 2
Accepted: 26 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In this paper, we develop a genealogy of practice approach for the historical analysis and comparison of Andean ceramic firing. This effort was set in motion by the similarity of two sets of ash mounds observed in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia, one modern and one from the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1100–1450). We eschew an ethnoarchaeological perspective in favor of considering their position within a longer genealogy of potting practice. We argue that a genealogical perspective foregrounds ephemeral evidence that is often ignored in dominant narratives, highlights the emergent nature of practices, and draws attention to subject formation across generations. We examine the extant data for pottery firing in the region, drawing out the genealogy of practices involved in firing facilities and subject formation from the Formative Period (1500 B.C. –A.D. 450) through the present. We then return to the ash mounds, juxtaposing the practices and archaeological traces to consider their historical emergences. These two approaches allow us to begin to map out the particularities of Lake Titicaca Basin production locales and to pose new questions of the social relations associated with ceramic firing contexts. Keywords Genealogies of practice . Juxtaposition . Craft production . Ceramic firing . Lake
Titicaca Basin . Andes
* Andrew P. Roddick [email protected] François Cuynet [email protected]
1
Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
2
Maître de Conférences, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
Roddick and Cuynet
Introduction In this paper, we develop an approach for the historical analysis and comparison of technical practices and their associated spaces. In particular, we track the genealogy of ceramic firing practices over the long term and juxtapose the archaeological traces of such practices in the Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia. Our interest in this comparative enterprise emerged after observing the similarity in form between the residues from modern pottery manufacture in the community of Chijipata Alta and features associated with Konto Konto, a Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1100-1450) site near the wellknown site of Tiwanaku. In both cases, multiple generations of ceramic firing resulted in large ash mounds visible on the twenty-first century altiplano landscape. These flattop mounds, known as Q'eya Konto (in Aymara), can be up to 2.5-m high and have stratigraphic layers dense with burn features and occasionally worked tools. The similarities of the form of these ceramic firing spaces might have been explored through the kinds of analogical reasoning associated with ethnoarchaeology. Instead, we recognized these features as the outcomes of complex historical trajectories (Stahl 1993, 2013), and thus
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