What does a Pre-columbian Mesoamerican ceramic factory look like?

I don’t have a very good answer to this question, and I suspect most Mesoamerican archaeologists would be similarly hard pressed to answer it. Ethnographic parallels, like the circular subterranean kilns and associated waster dumps of Coyotepec, Oaxaca, give us some possible models. A few archaeological features, like the pyrotechnological installations in Belize that Murata (2011) has described recently, also give us some ideas.

This question has been at the back of my mind for about thirty years, since I first started doing research on the production and distribution of Plumbate pottery. Neutron activation analysis of clays from near the Pacific coastal border between Mexico and Guatemala seems to have identified the areas where clays for Plumbate were procured: as shown in Figure 1, the lower Rio Naranjo in Guatemala has clays that match San Juan Plumbate, and the lower Rio Cahuacan has clays that match Tohil Plumbate. Within the lower Rio Naranjo area, rumor has it that Edwin Shook observed the destruction of a Plumbate kiln during road construction near La Blanca in the 60s or 70s, but he apparently didn’t photograph the feature, and he never published a description of it.

I have done some exploration on the Guatemalan side of the border, looking for additional features like the one Shook observed, but I found no clear evidence of pyrotechnological features with associated Plumbate waster dumps. Currently, the Proyecto Arqueológico Costa del Soconusco (PACS) is inventorying archaeological remains in the mangrove forest on the Mexican side of the border, where we might expect Tohil workshops to be located. As detailed on other posts to this blog, many mounds in this area include massive deposits of fired sediments, which, based on excavation, appear to be related to salt and/or ceramic production. But we haven’t yet tested any of the mounds west of the Rio Cahuacan, in the specific area identified as containing Tohil Plumbate clays.

Mounds in the mangrove forest west of the Cahuacan have large quantities of Plumbate sherds on the surface together with utilitarian vessels and solid ceramic cylinders that we believe are pot stands used in sal cocida salt production. But which of these mounds, if any, might have been sites of Tohil Plumbate production? The LiDAR imagery generated for the PACS give one viable and testable hypothesis.

Figure 2 shows the LiDAR imagery from the area just west of the Rio Cahuacan. I have visited many of the “CONQ” mounds and many of the “PIN” mounds, where I observed the Plumbate, salt production, and firing features discussed above and elsewhere on this blog. I have not yet had the opportunity, however, to visit the “CAH” mounds located in the southeast corner of the image. The complex consisting of Mounds CAH-12 through CAH-17 sits almost exactly on the peak of the probability surface shown in Figure 1, some features of this complex and its environs lead me to wonder if this is a Tohil Plumbate factory.  

Figure 3 zooms in on the CAH-12 complex. The labeled mounds and several smaller ones form a complex on what appears to be a slight rise on the dry land that forms the inland edge of the mangrove swamp at this location. Perhaps most tantalizing, there is one large depression and three smaller ones located within about 200 meters of the mound complex. The largest depression is almost 100 meters long by 50 meters wide, and approximately one meter deep. Could this be where Tohil Plumbate potters mined the clay that they formed into serving vessels for the local market and fancy effigies for the export market? If so, then Figure 3 would represent an answer to the question posed at the top of this blog entry.

Currently, identification of the CAH-12 mound complex as a Plumbate factory is pure speculation. I will travel back to Soconusco for a couple of weeks this June, however, at which time I will visit the mound complex and associated depressions. I will post a brief report of my observations on this blog by the end of June.