The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society invites the public to our monthly meeting and a presentation. At 6:30 we will have social time in the CSWS foyer. Then after a brief business meeting, Dr. James A. Davenport. His research has focused on pottery production in empires, especially the Inka Empire. Dr. Davenport’s discussion is titled “How to Make an Urpu: Investigating Inka Pottery Production using Archaeological Science.”. For zoom log-in information, go to SJBAS.ORG.

Abstract:
At its peak, Tawantinsuyu (the Inka empire) encompassed an area of over 2 million km2 in Andean South America, exerting control over an estimated 10 million subjects. One of the ways in which the Inka sought to control their subjects was through commensal politics, providing food and drink at feasts and rituals which was served on a distinct style of pottery with forms and decorations that were recognizably Inka. In a territory so large, the production of this pottery was not restricted to the imperial capital, but was decentralized, occurring in the provinces. This production was often carried out by the Inkas’ subjects themselves, fulfilling their labor obligations to the state. As a result, in spite of its relatively standardized appearance in form and decoration, Inka pottery was produced by many different potters, drawing from a wide range of technique and pottery-making knowledge to arrive at a prescribed form. Through a suite of scientific techniques (neutron activation analysis, thin section petrography, laser ablation-inductively coupled-mass spectrometry, and x-radiography), these techniques can be reconstructed, subsequently allowing for the reconstruction of the organization of production for Inka pottery on a site- and regional-level scale. Through this, information about how Inka territories were organized, and about how local people and potters interacted and negotiated with the Inka, can in turn be reconstructed.

Bio:
James A. Davenport is the Senior Manager of the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor in Columbia, Missouri, where he has worked since 2022. He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 2021. He has previously served as the Director of the Archaeology Laboratory at Augustana University and is a consulting scholar at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. His research has focused on pottery production in empires, and specifically how the Inka empire produced pottery in the central coast region of Peru. He has also worked collaboratively undertaking compositional analysis on many different materials and regions, including Neo-Assyrian pottery in Turkey and Iraq and early obsidian use in the Caucasus.