The Arizona State Museum Pottery Sample
All of the ceramic vessels used in this analysis are part of the Tarahumara
collection at the Arizona State Museum. Edmond Faubert collected these vessels,
along with a host of other artifacts, between 1973 and 1978 for donation
to the Arizona State Museum. Although Faubert attempted to collect a large
number of ceramics at different stages in their use-lives and of different
function, the collection does not represent a random sample. Faubert collected
those items that attracted his interest and that the Tarahumara were willing
to sell to him. Faubert recorded the function of almost every vessel at
the time they were collected, and his functional designations were used
for the purposes of this study. All of the vessels in the collection related
to tesgüino production (N = 36) were included in the sample, as well
as the water jars collected by Faubert (N = 26), for a total of 62 different
vessels. The tesgüino ceramics can further be broken down into fermentation
(N = 32) and cooking (N = 4) vessels. Because of the very small number of
tesgüino cooking vessels in the sample, they are not included in the
statistical analyses, although some interesting similarities and differences
with the other functional classes are noted. Almost all households now use
metal oil drums to cook the tesgüino before fermentation.
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#77-33-17: Tesgüino cooking vessel.
(© Arizona State Museum) |
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#77-33-154: Tesgüino fermentation vessel.
(© Arizona State Museum) |
Unfortunately, Faubert was not always explicit about the function of all
of the ceramics that he collected. The exact function of six of the vessels
was not specified. Five of these vessels were large, covered with tesgüino
residue, and were very morphologically similar to the tesgüino vessels
(77-33-19, 77-33-155, 77-33-278, 77-33-354, 77-33-494); based on these similarities,
all five of them were classified as tesgüino vessels for the purposes
of this analysis. The sixth pot (77-33-347) contained no detectable tesgüino
residue, and was the same size and shape as the majority of the water jars,
so it was categorized as a water jar for this analysis.
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#77-33-24: Bi-lobed fermentation vessel.
(© Arizona State Museum) |
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#77-33-668: water jar.
(© Arizona State Museum) |
(Continued)
