Palenque and Selected Survey Sites in Chiapas and Tabasco: The Preclassic

Methodology and Closing Comments

The extended discussion given to Preclassic jars merits attention, the shape class, especially if unslipped, usually playing a limited role in type-variety analyses of Maya ceramics. The Palenque focus of my investigation is a partial reason for this emphasis. Due to the extensive loss of surface finish, chronological partition at the site is heavily weighted toward unslipped pottery or toward sherds on which slip characteristics cannot be determined. This has carried over into shape-oriented comparisons outside Palenque.

Beyond this, shape carries a significance that is often overlooked. On a broad level, form classes are related to use or function as opposed to the construction of chronologies (cf. Dunnell, 1978). Use imposes constraints, and it is necessary that these be borne in mind if shape is to be employed as a chronological indicator. Nuances of form must be sought on levels that are reasonably attributed to style, and this requires attention to detail and accurate illustration. Ideally, a constellation of attributes–linking shape, surface finish, color combinations, decoration, and technological features with archaeological context–should be used in chronological partitioning, but, rarely if ever met, this ideal certainly is not achieved here. Instead, modes–too often in isolation rather than showing covariation–have been noted in a conceptual framework organized along broad shape classes.

Modes may well have persisted over substantial periods of time, reappearing as archaisms–traditions of formal, stylistic, and technological mannerisms, presumably reinforced by ideology–that constitute a "pool" of which potters were more or less cognizant and from which, depending in large part on what was fashionable, they drew. As repeatedly noted for Palenque and its environs, the occurrence of ceramic features having their greatest occurrence in the Early Preclassic but apparently in contexts more characteristic of the initial Middle Preclassic perhaps relates to this proposed cultural dynamic. This general phenomenon has been attributed by Demarest (1989:319) to a "common material culture substratum" of the Greater Isthmian region, local variants appearing over a protracted span of time. In any case, many of the observed features seem more at home on the fringes of the Maya area or outside it than within the Maya Lowlands.

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