Southwestern Pottery Standardization: An Ethnoarchaeological View from the Philippines

Archaeologists assume that products of specialists will be standardized and that standardized pottery reveals the presence of full-time potters. To test these assumptions, two populations of contemporary Philippine cooking pots are studied: those made on a household basis by the Kalinga, a “tribal” society, and those from Paradijon, a neighborhood of full-time potters. The data indicate that pots from Paradijon are much more standardized than those from Kalinga. Furthermore, the degree of standardization among prehistoric cooking pots from Grasshopper Ruin, in east-central Arizona, is examined in this context. We conclude that without knowledge of ceramic classes that were meaningful to the pottery makers, it is difficult to make reliable assessments of standardization in prehistoric assemblages.