Rethinking the Ware Concept

Prudence M. Rice

American Antiquity, Vol. 41, No. 4. (Oct., 1976), pp. 538-543.

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 COMMENT
RETHINKING THE WARE CONCEPT

The type-variety system of ceramic taxonomy is widely accepted, but some difficulties exist in the
identification and interpretation o f "wares" in the study o f Maya pottery. Although the ware concept was
formulated t o incorporate technological data, such as paste composition, into the classificatory scheme, in
practice ware definitions are frequently limited t o variables o f surface treatment. A redefinition o f the ware
concept and the creation o f a new unit o f paste composition analysis which crosscuts types is suggested. This will
realign theory closer t o what is current practice and will enhance the potential and actual contributions o f the
type-variety system t o the anthropological study o f pottery.

The type-variety system of ceramic analysis
has gained widespread acceptance in Meso-
america as in the southwestern and south-
eastern United States. It provides a useful
method of organizing a large corpus of ceramic
data in such a manner as to achieve time
discrimination and facilitate intersite com-
parison. The advantages as well as practical
limitations of this scheme are recognized by
most practictioners, and the general opinion
seems to be that the advantages of standard-
izing typological units and methods outweigh
most of the disadvantages.
My own recent involvement with the type-
variety system, both with a small group of
sherds previously typed according to the system
and with a larger collection which I am trying
to organize through type-variety system
principles, has led me to recognize some incon-
sistencies between logic and practice in type
variety usage in Mesoamerica. In this paper I
wish to address one point of dissatisfaction
with the type-variety system, the ambiguous
role of the conceptual unit "ware," and suggest
a possible solution. Although my argument is
illustrated with examples drawn from my own
experience with Maya pottery, its theoretical
and substantive implications are felt to be of
broader significance.
"Ware" is the classificatorv unit of the
type-variety system which deals with the tech-
nological attributes of pottery relating to paste
composition and surface finish. These atrributes
include texture, temper, hardness, thickness,
color, slip (presence, absence, color), and the
smoothing, luster, and "feel" of the surface,
whether slipped or unslipped. This unit there-
fore embraEes the attributes which most direct-
ly reflect patterns of clay and temper selection
and preparation, and vessel forming and finish-
ing techniques. In other words, from the
conceptual unit "ware," analysts can derive the
"procedural modes" (Rouse 1960) operating at
the earliest steps of pottery manufacture. Al-
though wares could thus be used to make
socioeconomic inferences concerning special-
ized manufacture and trade, no consensus has
been reached on the integration of this unit
into the overall taxonomic system. It is general-
ly regarded as constituting a broader, higher-
order level of comparison than types, and may
be drived from completed type definitions
(Culbert 1967; Willey, Culbert, and Adams
1967).
Sabloff and Smith (1970) have called atten-
tion to the comparative neglect and misuse
which the ware concept has suffered in recent
studies using the type-variety system of classi-
fication, and they correctly point out that this
unit has the potential of being an important
tool for Maya archaeologists. However, the
method they suggest for clarifying the ware
concept and its usage, a cognitive map for the
selection of materials and steps of manufacture
of a pot, is not the answer. The contrivance of
ethnosemantic models to formalize the com-
parison and explanation of attribute associa-
tions only makes the concept of "ware" more
difficult to utilize for archaeologists.
This is certainly not to say that it is
undesirable to attempt to integrate archaeolog-
ical and ethnographic studies of pottery and
pottery-making activities-merely to question
the method by which it is accomplished.
Stanislawski (1 975 :2 1) has asserted that "only
by ethnoarchaeological studies can we define
the meaning of artifact types . . . from the
viewpoint of the native peoples themselves, and
 COMMENT
thus produce a unit which has known cultural
meaning, use, and function within a real
society." I would argue, on the other hand, that
for archaeologists "the meaning of artifact
types" is relevant only with reference to some
particular problem and is not a single, absolute,
inherent, and universal characteristic of the
artifact class. A more useful approach to the
search for behavioral regularities in present and
past pottery-making and usage is the develop-
ment of comparable observational categories or
units that can be used by archaeologists and
ethnographers alike. Ideally, such categories
might be required to be: identifiable from small
samples of pottery (i.e., sherds) rather than
whole vessels only; identifiable in raw materials
as well as in finished artifacts; independent of
temporal, areal, or preservational context; and
capable of precise and objective measurement.
Most of these criteria apply to the component
attributes of what is generally referred to as
"paste composition," and thus the "ware" unit
of ceramic analysis could have some potential
for bridging the gap between ethnographic and
archaeological ceramic studies.
However, the ware concept as it now stands
has several inherent problems and a number of
ancillary ones contributing toward its misuse or
misinterpretation by archaeologists. These
problems appear to center on the nature and
meaning of the two major classes of variations
which are the basis of ware discrimination,
particularly "paste composition," and how
these can best be integrated into type-variety
analysis. Before the inferential potential of
these two variable classes can be realized, their
definitions should be examined and clarified.
The chief obstacle to implementing the ware
concept is that paste composition and surface
treatment are two independent properties. The
creation of a comparative unit for pottery such
as "ware" based on both paste composition and
surface treatment is a variation of the classic
"apples and oranges" problem. These two
classes of attributes are technologically in-
dependent and should not be combined into a
single organizational level. Although paste
texture, for example, may certainly influence
surface characteristics or appearance of un-
slipped wares, it does not necessarily follow
that one particular paste will be unslipped and
another will be slipped. The same clay-temper
mixture may be used for slipped and unslipped
539
pottery within a given complex.
Part of the reason for the independence of
paste composition and surface treatment is that
paste composition reflects, to a varying extent,
the availability and diversity of ceramic re-
sources within a particular area. Thus the paste
composition of a sherd is at least in part
environmentally determined, with cultural
behavior operating within these environmental
constraints in the selection from available re-
sources of those clays, tempers, pigments, etc.,
which are to be used. Surface treatment per se
is not so constrained; that is, whether a given
pot is or is not slipped is more culturally and
less environmentally determined, although
again resource availability and diversity might
determine whether certain kinds of clays which
make good slip clays exist in the immediate
environs, their colors, and their accessibility. A
distinctive paste composition may indicate ex-
ploitation of a particular clay resource by a
single group of potters who use it in the
manufacture of certain kinds of pottery. On the
other hand, a given paste or method of clay
preparation may have a relatively wide distribu-
tion within a region. Such distribution would
be at least in part conditioned by the geological
and climatological heterogeneity or homo-
geneity which influences the formation, char-
acteristics, and availability of the potters' re-
sources.
The point is that paste composition and
surface treatment represent attributes from two
separate subsystems which operate at different
levels in the ceramic system, but yet these have
been combined into a single level of the
type-variety taxonomic system. They both
represent some aspects of choice or selective
behavior from a broader range of alternatives
on the part of potters, and to a limited extent
one may be a consequence of the other. For
example, paste composition attributes may
relate to other variables such as form (more
tempering for extremely large vessels), function
(porosity may be desirable for water jars to
cool the water), smoothness (quantities of
coarse temper may cause a rough surface),
luster (some clays may naturally attain a high
luster), and degree of firing (calcite temper can
cause spalling above a certain level of firing in
terms of time and temperature). However, these
other attributes exist on a different analytical
and organizational level than does paste com-
540 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
position, and they are not taxonomically
equivalent.
Recognition o f the level at which these units
are comparable is obscured b y the fact that
paste attributes are not consistently integrated
into the type-variety system at the lower levels
o f differentiation and unit definition. Initially,
apparently, certain attributes o f paste composi-
tion were to be included at the varietal level:
"In contrast with those particulars which dis.
tinguish one type from another, such minor
ceramic differences [that distinguish varieties]
were the result o f work produced within the
confines o f relatively small social groups or b y
individual potters who indulged preferences as
to the locale where temper or clay must be
gathered . . . ." (Gifford 1960:343). Later, the
technological attributes were vaguely included
at the level o f the ceramic "group," which
should " . . . demonstrate a distinctive homo-
geneity in range o f variation concerning form,
base color, technological and other allied at-
tributes" (Smith and Gifford 1965:501). At the
same time, wares were defined as "types that
are similar technologically, displaying a close
consistency in range o f variation with regard to
attributes o f surface finish and paste composi-
tion (excepting temper)" (Smith and Gifford
1965 :502). Most recently paste attributes have
been explicitly associated with the "ware7' unit,
where "paste composition may be identified
through paste texture, kind o f temper, paste
hardness (rarely used), porosity, and color,"
although again temper may be excepted
(Sabloff and Smith 1969:278).
It should be clear that paste composition is
not a single variable or attribute class, discrete
and logically irreducible, as is form, for ex-
ample. The attribute class "general vessel form"
may have a number o f attribute states, or
individual observational categories, in it, such as
jar, bowl, plate, dish, vase, cup, and so forth.
T o categorize a vessel by form, the analyst
selects the appropriate one o f these descriptive
states and the vessel or sherd is identified with
that form category; the vessel is a "jar" and all
other states in this class are thereby eliminated.
Although the category "jar" itself may have a
number o f descriptive variants, such additional
variation does not remove the sherd from that
larger category.
Paste composition, however, includes a
number o f component variables or attributes,
[Vol. 41, No. 4, 19761
and each o f these has several discrete attribute
states or values. A vessel cannot be categorized
as "having texture" t o the exclusion o f having
hardness, color, temper, etc. Rather, it must be
assigned an attribute state within each o f these
component attributes o f paste composition, as
for example, fine, medium, or coarse texture,
or a numerical measurement o f hardness. Thus,
it is each o f these component attribute classes
that is discrete and irreducible.
Paste composition could conceivably,
though not necessarily desirably, be considered
a single attribute class, analogous to form. The
difficulty is that the difference in vessel propor-
tions (such as wall height, mouth diameter,
etc.) which are visually distinguishable almost
immediately and are the qualitative and
quantitative basis for form categories, are not
always so immediately apparent with paste
variables. Unusually distinctive pastes, as for
example, Fine Orange or Mars Orange, which
have been formulated on the "ware" level, are
examples o f conceptualizing paste composition
as a single attribute class. They are recognized
principally by their color and texture, together
with other less striking modes, but such occur-
rences are the exception rather than the rule.
The establishment o f classificatory units o f
paste composition would necessitate full ex-
ploration and description o f variation within
each paste attribute component in order to
avoid losing important information on total
variability.
The inconsistencies inherent in the "ware"
definition are reflected in the means by which
wares have been identified in practice. There
was some disagreement among participants in
the (1965) conference on Maya pottery as to
the proper analytic relationship o f wares to the
type-variety system in general. One line o f
reasoning favored continuing in effect the old
Carnegie Institution o f Washington system o f
separating out wares first and breaking them
down into types and varieties, while other
conferees felt that wares were better used as an
integrative device "abstracted from completed
type definitions" (Willey, Culbert, and Adams
1967:304).
In those studies utilizing the type-variety
system where wares have been identified, the
discriminations have been primarily dependent
on surface treatment, even though conceptually
the term "ware" is based on paste composition
 COMMENT
as well. Specifically, the presence or absence of
slips and their "feel" (waxy or glossy) have
been the most used criteria for separating
wares, as in "Peten Gloss Ware," "Flores Waxy
Ware," or "Uaxactun Unslipped Ware." In
other cases, very distinctive, gross associations
of attributes of paste and surface treatment
have been used, as in "Mars Orange Ware" or
"Fine Orange Ware."
Wares such as "gloss" wares and "waxy"
wares actually better accommodate the stated
procedures and goals of the type-variety system
than do wares based on paste. They are
methodologically more consonant with the
heirarchical ordering technique of the type-
variety system and with the scope of broad
intersite and intra-regional comparison. Addi-
tionally, they can be formulated by abstraction
from completed type definitions and thus may
have an integrative function. Wares based on
paste cannot logically be formulated this way
since, as noted, paste attributes are not con-
sistently incorporated into the lower levels of
the heirarchy of attribute clustering used t o
form varieties and types.
A further discrepancy between theory and
method exists, for although ideally "wares are
not limited in time as are types and varieties"
(Smith 197 1: 13), in practice wares have a very
broad implicit (and sometimes explicit)
temporal span. "Waxy" wares are Preclassic,
"gloss" wares are Classic; Fine Orange Ware is a
recognized time marker for Late Classic-
Terminal Classic occupations in the Maya Low-
lands, while Mars Orange Ware is restricted to
the Late Preclassic. There is nothing wrong with
wares having a time-sensitive dimension if they
are initially identified on other criteria, but
temporal qualifiers should not figure into the
original definitions. Consider Flores Waxy Ware
and Paso Caballo Waxy Ware. The differences
between the two "are minor" (the only differ-
ence noted in a chart of Preclassic ware
attributes is that the latter may have a multi-
color slip which the former does not), yet
Flores Waxy Ware is found in the Escoba
complex only, while Paso Caballo Waxy Ware is
found in the Cantutse complex only (Sabloff
1975:29-30, Fig. 20).
It is with some trepidation that I therefore
suggest that the "ware" concept be rethought,
and preferably that it be redefined. This sug-
gestion is made on the basis of four practical
54 1
considerations: (1) the present definition of the
"ware" concept is imprecise and inconsistent;
(2) the ware unit as presently conceived is
infrequently employed as part of type-variety
analyses; (3) when the concept is utilized the
resultant wares are not identified by the
criteria, albeit inconsistent, set forth in the
definition; and (4) opinions vary as to how
wares, whenever and however they are
identified, should be integrated into the type-
variety system.
Basically, the two attribute classes used in
ware identification, paste composition, and
surface treatment, might best be permanently
separated and one or the other used to define
wares. The two classes of attributes are, or
should be, independent of each other, as
discussed above, for the same paste may be
used for slipped and unslipped pottery. This is
true, for example, of Fine Orange Ware: the
ware definition is based on a particular con-
stellation of paste attributes, and surface treat-
ment is subsidiary. However, Flores Waxy Ware
and Paso Caballo Waxy Ware have almost the
same paste characteristics as UaxactGn Un-
slipped Ware (Sabloff 1975; Smith and Gifford
1966), yet they are separated from it by the
presence or absence of a slip. These "wares"
exist on different analytical and organizational
levels, and are neither taxonomically equivalent
nor, more importantly, interpretively equi-
valent. It is for this reason that the problemof
placing "ware" into the hierarchic relationship
of type-variety system units exists.
A redefinition of "ware" might most profit-
ably be restricted to attributes of surface
treatment. Such a redefinition makes ware
identification more harmonious, both practical-
ly and interpretively, with type-variety system
method and theory, and "ware" remains
primarily a taxonomic unit. Wares which have
already been defined on this basis would not
necessarily need further redefinition, except as
found to be appropriate on the basis of future
research.
Attributes relating to paste composition
might best be grouped together and considered
as a single modal or analytic unit (referred to as
"paste," or "fabric," or perhaps a different
term may be suggested) which crosscuts types
and wares. Several pastes or paste variants may
be identified within a given site's ceramic
collections. One paste may have a long history,
542 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
being used in types from several complexes; one
paste may occur in both slipped and unslipped
"wares"; another paste may occur in only one
particular variety of one type, and thus may be
extremely time- and area-sensitive. I am not
prepared to suggest rigorous principles of
nomenclature for pastes; descriptive terms,
place names, or merely letter designations
might be appropriate.
In some cases, very distinctive paste
characteristics may co-occur with surface treat-
ment characteristics that are also distinctive, as
in Fine Orange pottery. Perhaps in such
instances it would be appropriate to name the
resultant class a "paste ware," as for example,
Fine Orange Paste Ware. Such a term may
sound cumbersome or redundant given the
present broadly construed definition of "ware,"
but if the ware definition were narrowed to
surface treatment, definition of "paste wares"
would be more precise.
Because paste composition is actually several
variables rather than a single one, its study
could be conceptualized and organized accord-
ing to the same principles that underlie the
t y p e - v a r i e t y system. Paste composition
varieties, types, groups, and wares could be
determined based on the attributes of texture,
color. hardness, temper kind, quantity, and
size; presence or absence of a firing core;
thickness; porosity; and perhaps other criteria
as well. Such a classificatory procedure would
have greater inferential and integrative desir-
ability than the definition of a single attribute
of paste composition, discussed above.
Those groupings of pottery based on similar
paste composition may reflect use of a particu-
lar clay resource and may indeed be "used to
make inferences about economic features such
as manufacturing centers and trade" (Culbert
1967:92). The very distinctive attributes char-
acterizing them make them easily discerned and
separated early in the classification procedure.
They can, in addition, be significant space-time
indicators, pointing to a particular geographical
locus of manufacture at a particular time (Rice
1976).
Obviously such a detailed analysis of tech-
nological attributes as is suggested here is not
likely to play a major role in any ceramic study
where the principal objective is intersite com-
parison and chronology. In such a study,
varieties, types, groups, and "surface treatment
[Vol. 41, No. 4, 19761
wares" are likely to be a more satisfactory
means of organizing the data into a form more
readily comparable with other reports. How-
ever, formalizing a comparative unit of paste
study and incorporating it into type-variety
analysis has a number of advantages for archae-
ologists, aside from the contribution it can
make toward clarifying the now-ambiguous
"ware" concept: (1) Combined with some
knowledge of local ceramic resources, paste
study can contribute to a knowledge of local
manufacturing centers and change in produc-
tion loci through time. (2) By relating pottery
to the local resources, ceramic studies can move
away from sheer description and chronology
toward making a contribution to cultural
processes such as craft specialization and eco-
nomic interaction. (3) Paste studies can con-
tribute to an understanding of the history of
technological development at a site or in a
region. (4) Identification of particular paste
types or paste variants within a region can
reveal patterns of socioeconomic interaction, as
for example, trade and exchange, or practices
such as the copying of vessel forms and designs.
(5) Formalized paste categories provide a
sampling base of objectively defined units
within which research strategies designed to
investigate the above problems can be imple-
mented. (6) Formalized paste studies will help
integrate the results of physicochemical or
mineralogical analyses, such as neutron activa-
tion analysis or petrography, which can be used
in such investigations, into standard typological
analysis. (7) A further advantage is that formal-
ized units of paste analysis provide measure-
ment of properties common t o archaeological
pottery, contemporary pottery, and raw re-
sources. To anthropologists for whom the study
of contemporary potters yields insightful com-
parative detail on manufacturing procedures,
units of analysis that are useful to both
archaeologists and ethnographers allow com-
parisons through temporal and spatial variations
that might otherwise be impossible.
I have argued here that for purposes of
taxonomy the two technological variable cate-
gories, paste composition and surface treat-
m e n t , a r e logically and procedurally
independent. Ethnoarchaeologists could make a
significant contribution to typology by in-
vestigating this point, not with the objective of
determining the "meanings" of different classes
 COMMENT 543
of pottery but by demonstrations of statistical-
ly valid correlations between objectively
measurable attributes of technology and the
folk taxonomic categories. Although I am not
at all certain that whatever resulted from such a
study would necessarily demand procedural
modifications in classifications used by archae-
ologists, for example the combining of observa-
tionally and measurably discrete attributes in a
taxonomic scheme such as the type-variety
system, the results would undeniably be useful
at the interpretive level.
Few archaeologists would disagree with the
proposition that an artifact represents a series
of decisions, choices, or learned behavior on the
part of the maker, and that these decisions may
be based on criteria which have objective reality
apart from the cognitive system, as Arnold
(1971) has shown. The point, though, is to
achieve a productive, diachronically valid
method of elucidating this behavior. Such a
goal is better approached through systematic
development of comparable analytic units (such
as paste) which are empirically real apart from
their spatial-temporal context, and using them
in building models, rather than by invoking
cognitive rules and emic categories. To this end,
redefining the ware concept and creating a new
unit of analysis of paste attributes which
crosscuts types may enable the type-variety
system to make a broader contribution to the
anthropological study of archaeologically
defined cultures through pottery.
Arnold, Dean E.
1971 Ethnomineralogy of Ticul, Yucatan potters:
etics and emics. American Antiquity 36:2040.
Culbert, T. Patrick
1967 Preliminary report of the conference on the
prehistoric ceramics of the Maya Lowlands
(1965). Estudios de Cultura Maya 6:81-109.
Mexico.
CULTURAL HIATUS IN THE EASTERN GREAT BASIN?
The case recently made by Madsen and Berry (1975) for human abandonment of the entire eastern Great
Basin between approximately 3200 and 1500 B.P. is critically reviewed. The stratigraphic and radiocarbon data
on which their argument is based are shown t o be inadequate t o support it.
In a recent reassessment of northeastern
Great Basin prehistory, Madsen and Berry
(1975:391) suggest "(1) that climatically in-
Gifford, James C.
1960 The type-variety method of ceramic classi-
fication as an indicator of cultural phenomena.
American Antiquity 25:34147.
Rice, Prudence M.
1976 Ceramic continuity and change in the
Valley of Guatemala: a study of whiteware
pottery production. Unpublished Ph.D. Disser-
tation, Department of Anthropology, Pennsyl-
vania State University, University Park.
Rouse, Irving
1960 The classification of artifacts in archae-
ology. American Antiquity 25:3 13-23.
Sabloff, Jeremy A.
1975 Ceramics: Excavations at Seibal. Peabody
Museum, Harvard University, Memoirs 13.
Sabloff, Jeremy A,, and Robert E. Smith
1969 The importance of both analytical and
taxonomic classification in the type-variety
system. American Antiquity 34:278-85.
1970 Ceramic wares in the Maya area: a clarifica-
tion of an aspect of the type-variety system and
presentation of a formal model for comparative
use. Estudios de Cultura Maya 8:97-115.
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Smith, Robert E.
1971 The pottery of Mayapan: including studies
of ceramic material from Uxmal, Kabah, and
Chichen Itza. Peabody Museum, Harvard Uni-
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Smith, Robert E., and James C. Gifford
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edited by Robert Wauchope and Gordon R.
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duced reduction of the primary resource base
(halophytic dominated salt flats and salt
marshes) resulted in significant adaptive modi-