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The Temporality of Shapes: A Genealogy of Early Pottery-Making Practices in the Andean–Amazonian Borderland

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Abstract

This study explores a different way of writing history as an alternative to the “master narrative” by rethinking the fundamental practice of archaeology—the construction of chronology. Archaeological chronology has often been used as a calendar-like time axis, imposing a uniform temporality on the history of diverse things, each with its rhythm and pace of change. We focused on the arguments of George Kubler, who criticized it and proposed a new chronological framework based on his “formal sequence” concept. This new chronological framework enabled us to recreate the internal temporality of taskscapes of making things. We conducted a case study in the Andean–Amazonian borderland, where a radical change in pottery styles occurred in the second millennium B.C. Here, the methodologies for typology, seriation, and age estimation were all reconsidered to rebuild the regional chronology. We observed a “break” in the local pottery-style structure around the fourteenth century B.C. The changes that occurred at the time were not merely the addition of new technology to the local tradition but the transformation of the system governing the material relationships among potters’ bodies, making tools, and materials, composing the task of pottery-making. We cannot reach the complex and diverse historical narratives from a single, mono-linear chronology. Instead, we revisit the temporality of various taskscapes through the pursuit of the multilinear temporality of shapes. Subsequently, a regional history can be created by interweaving them together.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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All the Oxcal codes used in this study are available in the supplemental materials.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the people of Huánuco and the Ministerio de Cultura of Huánuco for their generous support for this study. We are also grateful to Dr. Eisei Tsurumi, the project leader of the Huánuco archaeological project, and other members of the research team, especially Cesar Sara Repetto, Lissete Acuña, Danilo Depaz, and Hironori Otani. Part of this paper is based on a doctoral dissertation of Kanezaki that was submitted to the University of Tokyo, and her subsequent presentation at the 13th Eastern Japan Research Roundtable of Japan Society for Studies of Ancient America. We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to her supervisor, Dr. Hiroyuki Sato, and all panelists of the roundtable. We also appreciate the useful advice from Dr. Takeshi Nakagawa on improvements to the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to our three reviewers for their helpful comments.

Funding

This study was funded by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. 17H05110, 17H05111, 21K20038, 22K13237, 22H04444, and the 15th Research Grant to Support Young Researchers of Paleo Labo.

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  1. The University Museum, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Yuko Kanezaki & Takayuki Omori

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  1. Yuko Kanezaki
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Correspondence to Yuko Kanezaki.

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Kanezaki, Y., Omori, T. The Temporality of Shapes: A Genealogy of Early Pottery-Making Practices in the Andean–Amazonian Borderland. J Archaeol Method Theory 31, 1–25 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-022-09587-1

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