Ceramic Commodities and Common Containers by Daniela Triadan is a recent example of the increasingly sophisticated analyses of southwestern U.S. pottery undertaken by a younger generation of researchers. The volume focuses on White Mountain Red Ware, a widely recovered class of pottery in the late prehistoric period (13th and 14th centuries A.D.). The geographic setting of the study is the Grasshopper region and Grasshopper Pueblo itself, a large Mogollon settlement in east-central Arizona that has been the focus of three decades of intensive archaeological fieldwork.
White Mountain Red Ware (hereafter WMRW) is characterized by its light-colored, relatively finetempered paste and a hard, orange-red slip, with geometric decoration painted in black or polychrome (black-and-white-on-red). Forms are primarily hemispherical bowls, most commonly diame-16-30 cm ter, but jars are also found. The ware has been divided by archaeologists into a series of types having chronological significance, and each type may be further subdivided into a series of decorative styles; one of the types of particular interest to this study is Grasshopper Polychrome.
Because of its wide areal distribution, WMRW has long been the basis for models of sociopolitical and economic organization in the Western Pueblo region, models that are usually based on stylistic analyses. Triadan's study departs from this pattern in that she uses compositional analyses of the pottery-neutron activation analysis (NAA), inductively coupled Plasma Emission Spectroscopy (ICP), and petrography-to explore some of these issues. The specific objectives of the study, most concisely stated in the abstract (p. 145), are to: "(1) define the source or sources of fourteenth-century [WMRW],
(2) investigate the organization of ceramic production and consumption within a large, aggregated late prehistoric community, and (3) evaluate the mechanisms of its circulation." As such, the monograph is of interest to specialists in southwestern U.S. archaeology, but students of pottery in general, particularly those concerned with issues of compositional characterization, should also find it valuable reading.
Chapter 1, "Ceramics in Modeling Prehistoric Behavior," provides an introduction to the research problem in culture-historical rather than theoretical-methodological terms. The significance of the study is seen not so much in understanding the specifics of WMRW ceramic production, distribution, and use as an economic enterprise. Rather, determination of local manufacture vs. importation of certain types of WMRW is the important contribution to reconstructing sociodemographic processes in east-central Arizona during a period of major population shifts.
Chapter 2, "Grasshopper Pueblo and the Grasshopper Region," establishes the context of the study. Environmentally, east-central Arizona is a complex transitional area, both geologically and vegetationally. It is a rugged, elevated plateau with hills and steep bluffs, an arid climate, and semixerophytic vegetation. This chapter outlines the region's prehistory, surveys the ceramic record, and provides an overview of archaeological research in the area.
The "meat" of the study comes in Chapter 3, "Sourcing Fourteenth-century White Mountain Red Ware," which presents the sample, the methods, and the findings. Unusually readable, the technical discussion in the text is amplified with 21 tables and 25 figures. Although Chapter 1 made no mention of a "ceramic ecological" orientation to the study, such a perspective is implicit in the detailed discussion of the region's geology and the evaluation of its ceramic resources (clays and tempers). The geological diversity of the area has been an enormous asset to researchers past and present who are interested in proveniencing its many different pottery types, but until recently systematic resource surveys have only