Insights into the Chupicuaro ceramic production during the Formative Period in Mesoamerica - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Insights into the Chupicuaro ceramic production during the Formative Period in Mesoamerica

Résumé

Little is known about the social, cultural and economical relationships between Central Mexico and Western Regions during the Middle and the Late Formative Periods (600 BCE – 250 CE). The Chupicuaro culture is known as one of the most dynamic Formative traditions in Western Mesoamerica, notably through its well-polished ceramics combining complex shapes, shimmering colours and diversified iconographic motifs. The forcefulness of the Chupícuaro pottery tradition seems to have influenced the ceramic productions of the Basin of Mexico, or to have been the source of local imitations and reinterpretations. The CHUPICERAM project (2021-2024), financially supported by the French National Research Agency, aims to clarify the nature and intensity of these relationships, focusing on ceramic materials from Chupicuaro culture and from Cuicuilco culture – a cultural core of the Basin of Mexico. The project follows a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, bringing together Mexican and French scientific teams. By cross-referencing the analytical results, we attempt to establish stylistic, technical and compositional groupings that will make it possible to formulate hypotheses on the manufacturing processes and sources of supply of raw materials in the diachrony and for both Chupicuaro and Cuicuilco cultures. In a first phase, we focus on ceramic sherds from different archaeological sites and different periods of the Chupicuaro culture (Chupicuaro and Mixtlan Periods). From the corpus of about 200 sherds, archaeological groups have been established on the basis of the patterns and colours of the decorations and of the shapes of the sherds. We used non-invasive analytical methods for the characterisation of the decorations and the ceramic pastes (hyperspectral imaging, µ-Raman, p-XRF…). In parallel, polished cross- and thin-sections were prepared from a reduced number of sherds for morphological and quantitative compositional analyses under SEM-EDX, and petrographical analyses. In addition, a comparative analysis with geological samples from nearby sites and also with ceramic replicas fired from these samples is currently undertaken for provenance studies. All the ceramic pastes of the archeological sherds are identified as non-calcareous (CaO < 2.5 wt%). Our first results show compositional differences in the diachrony (Chupicuaro sherds versus Mixtlan sherds) of these ceramic pastes, both for major elements (Na, Al) and trace elements (Rb, Zr). Regarding the decorations, whatever the period, they consist of a mixture of clay and iron oxides for the reds, and of clay, iron oxides and manganese oxides for the black/café ones. The clayey beige decorations are rich in calcium, while the white ones resemble the ceramic pastes in term of composition. Together with the mineralogical data, those results are the focus of the present communication.

Domaines

Chimie
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-04195383 , version 1 (04-09-2023)

Identifiants

Citer

Fanny Alloteau, Ayed Ben Amara, Nadia Cantin, Héctor Cabadas-Báez, Sergey Sedov, et al.. Insights into the Chupicuaro ceramic production during the Formative Period in Mesoamerica. European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics (EMAC), Jun 2023, Pise, Italy. ⟨10.19276/plinius.2023.emac⟩. ⟨hal-04195383⟩
8 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More