Continuity and Change in a Domestic Industry: Santa María Atzompa, a Pottery Making Town in Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

The potters of Santa Maria Atzompa, a town in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, have been making pottery for at least 500 years, and the town has been widely known for its production of green lead-glazed cookware and ornamental pottery. This study, conducted in the 1990s, looks at how Atzompa pottery production changed since studies made in the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning in the mid-1990s, to a large extent as a result of public concern, publicity, and legislation about the lead glaze, the potters changed the style, distribution, and social context of their ceramic production. Also examined was the dynamics of household production and the choices that the potters made. A third element of the study was compositional analysis of the various ceramic materials and pastes used by the potters. Los alfareros de Santa Maria Atzompa, un pueblo en el Valle de Oaxaca en el sur de Mexico, han fabricado ceramica desde hace 500 anos, y el pueblo ha sido ampliamente reconocido por su produccion de utensilios de cocina de ceramica verde vidriada y ceramica ornamental. Este estudio, realizado en la decada de 1990, trata de la produccion de ceramica de Atzompa y como cambio desde los estudios realizados en los anos 1950 y 1960. A mediados de la decada 1990, hubo una gran preocupacion publica y legislativa acerca del vidriado con plomo, y los alfareros modificaron el estilo, la distribucion y el contexto social de su produccion de ceramica. Tambien examinamos la dinamica de la produccion domestica y las opciones disponibles a los alfareros. Un tercer enfoque es el analisis de composicion de los distintos barros, materiales de desgrasante y pastas utilizados por los alfareros. 2 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY latter was in Oaxaca at the time and gave me guidance in sample collection. It seemed both interesting and useful to analyze these materials, and I was fortunate that Hector Neff and Michael Glasscock at MURR thought it a valuable project, one that could develop a database for Oaxaca ceramics and prove useful for archaeologists, something that has subsequently occurred (Joyce et al, 2006; Spores and Thieme, in press). During the course of my research, accompanied by the potters, we visited and mapped clay sources and collected samples. From potters' workshops, I collected additional samples of raw clays, pastes, and sherds with known composition and methods of preparation of their component clays. Sixty-three samples of clays, pastes, and sherds of known composition were subjected to instrumental neutron activation analysis at the University of Missouri Research Reactor. My interest in the long-term use of the clay materials grew, and Stephen Kowalewski assisted me in identifying possible ceramic production sites near Atzompa, from the Valley of Oaxaca Settlement Pattern Project, and Marcus Winter located sherds from those sites. My research methodology involved focused interviews and participant observation, emphasizing production technology and the family dynamics of pottery production. In 1989 and 1990, I focused on a few hou...