Plain-Ware Ceramics and Residential Mobility: A Case Study From the Great Basin

Plain, utilitarian ceramics from prehistoric farmers and foragers in north-western Utah are used to identify whether ceramics reflect mobility. Simple methods measure the degree of investment in ceramic manufacture. Investment is treated as a general concept that subsumes other assessments of ceramic variability such as use-life and function. Investment is compared with mobility using archaeological sites with independent measures of mobility. A hypothesis proposing greater investment in the quality of ceramic manufacture with increasing residential stability, occupational redundancy and/or the presence of a logistic system is variously supported. X-ray diffraction of ceramic temper is used to test two hypotheses about the expected distance to raw material sources and variability in the use of sources with increasing mobility. Variation is best described by geographical proximity, and the number of utilized sources increases with mobility.