Archaeology, Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Seminar, 16 August
Dr Sarah Kelloway | The University of Sydney
“International Pots of Mystery: using PXRF spectroscopy to provenance botijas from 16th century sites on Peru’s north coast”
Abstract
Botijas/olive jars are one of the most ubiquitous types of ceramic found at Spanish colonial archaeological sites across the New World. Large, coarse and wheel-made, these ceramic storage vessels arrived in the Americas with the onset of Spanish colonisation and were soon produced in the colonies. In this talk I present the results of visual and portable XRF analyses of botijas from the 16th century sites of San Miguel de Piura and Carrizales, north coast Peru, two quite different site types: the former, the first city established in Peru (modern) by the Spanish and the latter, an indigenous reducción. This study explores the potential of in-the-field provenance determinations and discusses the implications of such sourcing on broader archaeological questions. Results to date show that PXRF analyses of these vessels enable their provenancing to specific regions and countries of origin, a step further than that achieved by visual (macro) inspection of sherds alone, and that numerous economic, socio-religious and political factors were at play in the use and potential re-use of botijas at these sites.
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The Department of Archaeology hosts a lively departmental research seminar series. Everyone is welcome to attend.
Where
Seminars are held in the Refectory from 4-5pm, and are followed by drinks and discussion.
Refectory H113
Quadrangle A14
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2019 Seminar Series convenors:
Alix Thoeming, Katherine Woo, and Simon Wyatt-Spratt
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The Department of Archaeology is part of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI).