4 Interpreting Form and Context

Archaeology is in mortal danger of losing itself on the bypaths of abracadabra. ere is precious little diierence between the Maya medicine man mystifying his patients with muttered incantations and the ceramicist awing his scant congregation with still more esoteric names. ompson : xvii e vast majority of artifactual materials recovered at Maya sites are broken sherds recovered from the lls of stratigraphic excavations. While whole vessels are incorporated into ceramic analysis, they are generally less plentiful than pottery sherds and, thus, are less likely to be the primary unit of ceramic analysis. Jeremy Sablo ((:) distinguished between the type-variety study of sherds and the modal analysis of form, noting that in most Maya ceramic analyses " the study of individual modes is either forgotten or relegated to a minor role. " James Giord (:) pointed out that ceramic analyses were " obliged to cope with large quantities of sherds and adapt the type: variety-mode approach to the limitations of the sherd collections " (our emphasis) even though " our conceptual scheme is based on whole vessels and culturally meaningful segments of vessels. " For half a century, it has been primarily broken sherds that have been the focus of Maya ceramic analysis. Many site chronologies are based on type: variety-mode analyses of sherds, and many cultural reconstructions of ancient Maya society are also premised on these fragmented materials. But are there other ways of approaching ancient Maya pottery? As both Sablo ((:) and Giiord ((: ,) have noted, the answer is " yes. " e goals of type: variety-mode analysis are to categorize and label Maya ceramics to promote intersite comparisons (Sablo :)—and the use of a common system of nomenclature and illustration does permit this. But much