Compositional analysis of Intermountain Ware pottery manufacturing areas in western Wyoming, USA

Single-Grain Optically Stimulated Luminescence Ages of Brownware Pottery in the Middle Rocky Mountains and the Spread of Numic Ceramic Technology

“…As Eerkens and others (2002:203) note, many researchers cite inconsistency in identifying key attributes for the failed development and use of brownware typologies (Dean 1992). Eerkens and others (2002) suggest that geochemical and mineralogical analyses provide the most reliable and replicable typologies in the western Great Basin, a technique that Finley and Scheiber (2010) verified in the Wyoming Basin and MRM. Coale (1963) provided the most consistent, cohesive, and regionally applicable description of brownware ceramics.…”

“…In the Absaroka Range, archaeologists have used brownwares to explore issues of identity, continuity of craft technologies, and mobility as resistance within a context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture contact (Scheiber and Finley 2010, 2011a). Finley and Scheiber (2010) conducted the only geochemical and mineralogical compositional analysis to date. Their pilot study examined sherds from four sites in the Wyoming Basin and Absaroka Range to explore social interactions between resident Kukundika (i.e., Buffalo Eaters) and Tukudika (i.e., Sheep Eaters) bands, who occupied the two areas at contact (Hoebel 1938).…”

“…Haspel (1984) described brownware ceramics from four Wyoming assemblages that share the same essential attributes as Great Basin brownwares: flat bottoms, straight but thick walls, direct to curved rims, and coarse temper. A poorly standardized regional typology is a major classification problem, and like western Great Basin studies, geochemical and mineralogical typologies are the most reliable and replicable approach (Finley and Scheiber 2010). Recently, the AD 2011 Norton Point wildfire in the Absaroka Range north of Dubois, Wyoming, exposed a major Shoshone occupation with more than 2,000 brownware sherds (Scheiber et al 2014).…”