Researchers in the CTL undertake analyses of physical, mineralogical, and elemental properties of pottery to provide precise data relating to chronology, provenance or manufacturing origins, processes of production, culture change, and the development of sociopolitical and economic complexity.
Research focuses geographically on Florida, the Southeastern US, and the Caribbean Basin. In the CTL, we apply a wide range of analytical techniques, including sherd refiring, vessel reconstruction, formal and functional analysis, and various experiments with clays, with emphases on petrographic analysis and elemental analysis.
Characterizing the mineral and elemental composition of pottery provides data used to address questions of pottery technology and manufacturing origins (i.e., provenance), which ultimately contribute to our understandings of past manufacturing techniques, social interaction, mobility, and exchange. The determination of provenance among earthenware vessels, in particular, often involves comparisons with clay samples collected from the vicinity or region of archaeological interest.
Petrographic analysis is a geological method that has been applied to archaeological pottery since the 1930s. Petrographic characterization of pottery thin sections provides identification of constituent mineral grains and quantification of constituent particle size and abundance.
To obtain elemental data on ceramics and their component parts, researchers in the CTL use a variety of analytical techniques including laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), neutron activation analysis (NAA), and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF).
Recent Publications
Wallis, Neill J., and Thomas J. Pluckhahn
2023 Understanding Multi-Sited Early Village Communities of the American Southeast through Categorical Identities and Relational Connections. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 71:101527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101527
Jenkins, Jessica A., Neill J. Wallis, and Michael D. Glascock
2023 Using Neutron Activation Analysis to Evaluate Relational Connections during a Period of Transformative Social Change in the American Southeast. Journal of Archaeological Science:Reports 48 (103859). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103859
Rice, Prudence M. and Neill J. Wallis
2022 Thoughts on Weeden Island Pottery Classification: The Type-Variety System (Again). Southeastern Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.1080/0734578X.2022.2086517
Kracht, Emily, Lindsay Bloch, and William F. Keegan
2022 Production of Greater Antillean Pottery and Its Exchange to the Lucayan Islands: A Compositional Study. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 43: 103469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103469
Kracht, Emily, and Lindsay Bloch
2022 Clear as Mud: The Origins of Early Pottery in the Lucayan Islands. Talking Taino. Times of the Islands Winter 2022.
Hanna, Jonathan, Michael Pateman, Lindsay Bloch, and William F. Keegan
2021 Human-Environment Interactions in a Bahamian Dune Landscape: A Geoarchaeological Study of a New Lucayan Burial Site. Geoarchaeology. DOI: 10.1002/gea.21866
Bloch, Lindsay, Jacob Hosen, Emily Kracht, Michelle LeFebvre, Claudette Lopez, Rachel Woodcock, and William Keegan
2021 Is It Better to Be Objectively Wrong or Subjectively Right? Testing the Accuracy and Consistency of the Munsell Capsure Spectrocolorimeter for Archaeological Applications. Advances in Archaeological Practice 9(2): 132-134. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2020.53 PDF
Bloch, Lindsay and Elizabeth Bollwerk
2020 Coarse Earthenware in Dominica. In Slavery on the Edge of Empire: The Political Ecology of a Caribbean Plantation, edited by Mark Hauser and Diane Wallman, pp.129-152. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.
Bloch, Lindsay
2019 Sourcing Domestic and Industrial Ceramics from Trents Plantation Barbados using LA-ICP-MS (Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry). In Pre-Colonial and Post-Contact Archaeology in Barbados, edited by Maaike S. de Waal, Niall Finneran, Matthew C. Reilly, Douglas V. Armstrong & Kevin Farmer, pp. 303-320. Sidestone Press, Leiden. Read Online
Bloch, Lindsay and Amy Alleman
2019 Rose Red-Filmed by Any Other Name: A Genealogy of Pottery Typology in the Southeastern United States. SAA Archaeological Record 19(4): 27-31. PDF
Bloch, Lindsay, Neill J. Wallis, George Kamenov, and John M. Jaeger
2019 Production Origins and Matrix Constituents of Spiculate Pottery in Florida, USA: Defining Ubiquitous St. Johns Ware by LA-ICP-MS and XRD. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24: 313-323. doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.01.012 Download PDF
Pluckhahn, Thomas J. and Neill J. Wallis
2018 Swift Creek at a Human Scale. Southeastern Archaeology 37(2):129-137. doi.org/10.1080/0734578x.2017.1342067
Rice, Prudence M., Ann S. Cordell, Gerald Kidder, Willie G. Harris Jr., Timothy W. Pugh, and Evelyn Chan Nieto
2018 Early Construction at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala: An Architectural-Footing and -Bonding Sample. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17: 754-761. doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.040
Cordell, Ann S., Neill J. Wallis, and Gerald Kidder
2017 Comparative Clay Analysis and Curation for Archaeological Pottery Studies. Advances in Archaeological Practice Volume 5(1):93-106. doi.org/10.1017/aap.2016.6
Livingood, Patrick C. and Ann S. Cordell
2017 Point/Counter Point II: the Accuracy and Feasibility of Digital Image Techniques in the Analysis of Pottery Tempers using Sherd Edges. In Integrative Approaches in Ceramic Petrography, edited by Mary F. Ownby, Isabelle C. Druc, and Maria A. Masucci, pp. 196-214. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Pluckhahn, Thomas J., and Neill J. Wallis
2017 Social Networks and Networked Scholars: An Open-Access Database of Paddle Designs from Pottery of the Woodland Period in the American Southeast. Advances in Archaeological Practice 5(2):159-169. doi.org/10.1017/aap.2016.11
Wallis, Neill J., Ann S. Cordell, Erin Harris-Parks, Mark C. Donop, and Kristen Hall
2017 Provenance of Weeden Island “Sacred” and “Prestige” Vessels: Implications for Specialized Ritual Craft Production. Southeastern Archaeology 36(2):131-143.
dx.doi.org/10.1080/0734578X.2016.1237229
Wallis, Neill J., Thomas J. Pluckhahn, and Michael D. Glascock
2016 Sourcing Interaction Networks of the American Southeast: NAA of Swift Creek Complicated Stamped Pottery. American Antiquity 81(4):717-736. doi.org/10.1017/S0002731600101052
Lollis, Charly, Neill J. Wallis, and Ann S. Cordell
2015 Was St. Johns Pottery Made with Swamp Muck As Temper? An Experimental Assessment. The Florida Anthropologist 68(3-4): 97-112.
Wallis, Neill J., Zachary I. Gilmore, Ann S. Cordell, Keith H. Ashley, Thomas J. Pluckhahn, and Michael D. Glascock
2015 The Ceramic Ecology of Florida: Compositional Baselines for Pottery Provenance Studies. STAR: Science & Technology of Archaeological Research 1(2):29-48. dx.doi.org/10.1080/20548923.2015.1133119
Kemp, Kassie C.
2015 Pottery Exchange and Interaction at the Crystal River Site (8CI1), Florida. Unpublished MA thesis, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. Download PDF
Wallis, Neill J., Ann S. Cordell, Kathleen A. Deagan, and Michael J. Sullivan
2014 Inter-ethnic Social Interactions in 16th Century La Florida: Sourcing Pottery Using Siliceous Microfossils. Journal of Archaeological Science 43:127-140. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2013.11.031
Wallis, Neill J., Ann S. Cordell, and James B. Stoltman
2014 Foundations of The Cades Pond Culture in North-Central Florida: The River Styx Site (8AL458). Southeastern Archaeology 33(2): 168-188. dx.doi.org/10.1179/sea.2014.33.2.003
Cordell, Ann S. and Kathleen Deagan
2013 Paste Variability and Clay Resource Utilization at the Fountain of Youth Site, St. Augustine, Florida, 8SJ31. In Life Among the Tides: Recent Archaeology on the Georgia Bight, edited by V.D. Thompson and D.H. Thomas, pp. 95-117. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 98.
Wallis, Neill J. and Ann S. Cordell
2013 Petrographic Analysis of Pottery and Clay Samples from the Georgia Bight: Evidence of Regional Social Interactions. In Life Among the Tides: Recent Archaeology on the Georgia Bight, edited by V.D. Thompson and D.H. Thomas, pp. 119-142. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 98.
Wallis, Neill J., and George D. Kamenov
2013 Challenges in the Analysis of Heterogeneous Pottery by LA-ICP-MS: A Comparison with INAA. Archaeometry 55(5):893-909. doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00718.x
Pluckhahn, Thomas J. and Ann S. Cordell
2011 Paste Characterization of Weeden Island Pottery from Kolomoki and its Implications for Specialized Production. Southeastern Archaeology 30(2):288-310. dx.doi.org/10.1179/sea.2011.30.2.006
Wallis, Neill J.
2011 The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Wallis, Neill J., Ann S. Cordell, and Lee A. Newsom
2011 Using Hearths for Temper: Petrographic Analysis of Middle Woodland Charcoal-tempered Pottery in Northeast Florida. Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (11) 2914-2924. doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2011.05.024
Wallis, Neill J., Matthew Boulanger, Jeffrey R. Ferguson, Michael D. Glascock
2010 Woodland Period Ceramic Provenance and the Exchange of Swift Creek Complicated Stamped Pottery in the Southeastern United States. Journal of Archaeological Science 37(10):2598-2611. doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.05.020