CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 22, No.
3, June 1981
@ 1981 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research 0011-3204/81/2203-0002$02.25
Evolution of Specialized Pottery Production:
A Trial Model1
by Prudence M. Rice
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have until quite recently given less attention
to production than to inter- and intraregional distribution (cf.
Morris 1974, Arnold 1975a, van der Leeuw 1976, Rice 1976a).
Although the methods of physicochemical analysis that are
used to identify sources of raw material can provide a basis for
a study of the manufacture of archaeological objects, they have
been used primarily to study trade. Provenience studies have
been largely concerned with "macroprovenience," that is,
characterizations of local versus foreign or trade materials on
a regional level. "Microprovenience" analyses, the kind that
are necessary for study of production within a local area, are
somewhat less common.
The study of specialist production involves a number of
interrelated theoretical and methodological questions, among
them the following:
1. What are the environmental and sociopolitical precondi-
tions of specialization?
2. What congruence can be established between archaeologi-
cal definitions of specialization and ethnographic ones? How
can specialization be defined archaeologically? Processually?
Sociopolitically?
3. What is the nature of the evidence for specialized produc-
tion? What criteria can be used to identify specialist production
and/or the products of specialists?
4. What kinds of "forcing conditions," environmental or
sociocultural, select for specialization?
1 This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented
at a workshop on craft production held in the Department of Anthro-
pology, Arizona State University, on April 19, 1979, and a shorter
version presented in a symposium on the same topic at the 44th
annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver,
April 23, 1979. I would like to thank L. Jill Loucks for performing
most of the computations.
PRUDENCE M. RrcE is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Florida (Gainesville, Fla. 32611, U.S.A.) and Assis-
tant Curator of Archaeology at the Florina State Museum. Born
in 1947, she was educated at Wake Forest University (B.A., 1969;
M.A., 1971) and at the Pennsylvania State University (Ph.D.,
1976). Her research interests are pottery studies and Lowland
Maya archaeology. Her publications include "Ceramic Con-
tinuity and Change in the Valley of Guatemala," in The Ceramics
of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, edited by R. K. Wetherington (Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978); with
E. S. Deevey, D. S. Rice, and others, "Maya Urbanism: Impact
on a Tropical Karst Environment" (Science 206:298-306); and,
with D. S. Rice, "The Northeast Peten Revisited" (American
Antiquity 45:432-54).
The present paper was submitted in final form 3 vu 80.
Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981
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5. Why do certain kinds of specializations appear in certain
parts of a region and not in others?
6. Why, when there are several communities involved in the
same craft product, may each have its own distinctive specialty?
7. How can the evolution of craft specialization be fitted into
general schemes of cultural evolution?
8. What are the implications of part-time versus full-time
specialization, and how can they be differentiated archaeo-
logically?
9. Is control of production centralized or decentralized?
This paper is an effort to address some of these questions with
reference to pottery production.
GENERAL THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Economic specialization is a generally accepted concomitant of
social complexity. Cross-cultural studies of social complexity
have suggested significant relationships between occupational
specialization, urbanization (measured by settlement size), and
cumulative information content of the culture (Tatje and
Naroll 1973, McNett 1973). From an ecological and evolution-
ary perspective, social stratification and economic specialization
reflect the differential distribution of resources and the societal
management of these resources.
Ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological research has often
focused on production, frequently emphasizing a society's
manufacturing techniques or learning patterns. Identification
of economic specialists may be by any one or a combination of
the following criteria: amount of time spent performing the
occupation; the proportion of subsistence obtained through the
occupation; the existence of a recognized title or native name
for the specialty; and the payment of money or giving of a
gift in exchange for the product (Tatje and Naroll 1973).
Archaeological definitions of craft specialization are poorly
developed and virtually impossible to correlate with these
criteria. Additionally, it has been difficult to understand how
the manufacture of pottery evolved from what may have been
a typical activity performed by self-sufficient households along
with a variety of other tasks into a specialized economic pursuit
carried out by a small number of skilled practitioners who did
little if anything else to earn a living. It is clear that some
operational definition of craft specialization needs to be de-
veloped for and by archaeologists.
Craft specialization is here considered an adaptive process
(rather than a static structural trait) in the dynamic interrela-
tionship between a nonindustrialized society and its environ-
219
 ment. Through this process, behavioral and material variety in
extractive and productive activities is regulated or regularized.
(This is not to say that in simpler societies there are no regu-
larities in production, but only to suggest that in complex
societies the variety is regulated in different ways and to differ-
ent degrees.) This paper is based on the hypothesis that such
variety regulation is focused on the patterns of access to or
utilization of some resource, following Fried's (1967: 191) ob-
servations on the correlation between social differentiation and
the differentiation of access to resources. In other words, craft
specialization represents a situation in which access to a certain
kind of resource is restricted to a particular social segment.
In nonranked, egalitarian, or acephalous societies, access to
resources is largely unlimited. It may be bounded by division
of labor on the basis of age or sex. Economies are charac-
teristically underproductive, only a small proportion of the
labor force being oriented toward "surplus" (Sahlins 1972).
In ranked societies, with larger absolute population size and
greater population density, some differentiation of resource ac-,
cess may be noted (e.g., Northwest Coast fishing rights). Divi-
sion of labor is still by age and sex, and, although there may be
some low-level or incipient specialization on the basis of skill,
interest, or need, "no political power derives from such spe-
cialization" (Fried 1967: 115). Reciprocal gift-giving and pres-
tation are important among ethnographically known societies,
and prestige and leadership accrue to those who accumulate
goods and dispose of them generously (Sahlins 1960, Firth 1965,
Oliver 1955).
In stratified societies, division of labor is formalized and ac-
cess to basic or productive resources is limited. Fried (1967:
188-89) points to two means by which access can be restricted:
(1) by assigning direct rights to the use of a particular resource
to particular individuals or groups (generally in exchange for
something either tangible, e.g., products of that resource, or
intangible, e.g., loyalty) and (2) by demanding a greater return
in goods or labor for access to specific resources on the part of
those not granted direct use rights.
In the products and/or in the productive activities, the ob-
jective results of such regulation of access may take the form
of standardization (reduction in variety), elaboration (increase
in variety), or both. Standardization may emphasize reduced
variety in behavior and in the product. Standardization of
utilization of raw materials, standardization or simplification
of manufacturing methods (mass production, routinization),
standardization of shapes, sizes, colors, etc., all would fall into
this realm. Elaboration may be exhibited in an increase in the
number of kinds of goods produced (Mortensen's [1973] "in-
novation curve") and also in unusual forms, in decorative
styles or motifs, and in utilization of new (and possibly rare)
raw materials.
Thus, in complex societies, producers, production means, and
the products themselves reflect the inherent internal variety of
a diverse or segmented social system. Different social segments
will have different demands and different degrees of ability or
means to satisfy them. It is hypothesized that the demand for
such variety and the ability to obtain it will begin at the upper
end of the social continuum. The existence of variety in kinds
of goods or services and in elaboration of their appearance or
composition should vary more or less directly with social status
(Otto 1975).
Identification of specialist production has been fairly straight-
forward in complex civilizations or states (e.g., Teotihuacan,
Uruk, Inca), where the socioeconomic differentiation was
formalized to the extent that occupational barrios, wards, or
even shops can be found. At Teotihuacan, for example, where
an estimated 25-35% of the populace was involved in craft
production, evidences of lapidary, obsidian-working, and pot-
tery craft barrios were located (Millon 1970). On the Susiana
Plain, the shift to statehood in Early Uruk times was accom-
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panied by a shift from small, scattered craft shops to larger
centralized shops (Wright and Johnson 1975:279). In a number
of areas of Europe, sherds can be traced to particular kiln sites
or known manufacturers (Poole and Finch 1972, Widemann
et al. 1975). However, the proportion of such sites is small com-
pared with the number of ceramic-bearing sites or cultures
(e.g., Maya, Halaf, Anasazi, Weeden Island) in which, on the
basis of other indicators of social complexity, some degree of
specialization seems likely. The problem is how to detect spe-
cialization in this kind of site.
For pottery, there are a number of traditional lines of evi-
dence for specialized production. Some of these suggest simply
that production was in the hands of a small number of particu-
larly skilled producers: apparent proficiency of manufacture of
certain kinds of pottery (types, forms, decorative styles; e.g.,
Maya human-figure polychromes), apparent mass production,
suggested by large numbers of identical artifacts and/or
standardized size or appearance (Morris 1974; e.g., sized bowls
for grain distribution [Wright and Johnson 1975], homogeneity
[Adams 1970], interchangeable mold-made parts [Rathje 1975],
sized Roman bowls [Rottlander 1967]), and potters' fingerprints
in the clay [Barbour 1977]). In other cases, the evidence suggests
areas of production within a site: concentrations of tools used
in manufacture (such as molds [Wright and Johnson 1975]), of
raw materials, of unfired vessels or fired vessels of identical
kinds (form, type, etc.), or of overfired, misfired, or broken
ceramic objects (Menzel 1976). Where specific loci (such as
individual sites or residence compounds) for the manufacture
of particular pottery cannot be identified, broader regions of
production have been hypothesized on the basis of regional dis-
tribution patterns of design microstyles (e.g., the distribution of
different widths of incised cross-hatched bands on Uruk pottery
[Johnson 1975, Wright and Johnson 1975], Postclassic Highland
Polychrome painting styles in Guatemala [Wauchope 1970],
Classic Maya polychrome mortuary pottery [Adams 1970],
Nazca-Ica polychromes [Proulx 1968]), distribution of dis-
tinctive technological characteristics (e.g., Maya Fine Orange
pottery [Sayre, Chan, and Sabloff 1971], Thin Orange pottery
[Sotomayor and Castillo-Tejera 1963], Plumbate pottery [Shep-
ard 1948], Palenque pottery [Rands 1967]), or correlation of
technological and stylistic variables (e.g., Rio Grande glaze
paint wares [Shepard 1942], Late Classic Tikal pottery [Fry
1969, Fry and Cox 1974]).
For the study of craft specialization in pottery, more detailed
attention to the raw materials and to the ceramic products
themselves, beyond standard typological analysis, will be use-
ful. Trace-elemental studies and microscopic examination of
mineral constituents provide precise characterization of the
ceramic raw materials at a particular site and of the fired pot-
tery recovered in excavations. What is lacking is some sort of
theoretical structure within which these kinds of technical data
can provide a basis for inferring the existence of specialists.
What follows is an attempt to create such a framework.
Variability in preindustrial ceramic products exists, first, for
the same reasons it exists in any other aspect of material cul-
ture: over time and space, replication of a "mental template"
is never perfect. There are numerous producers with different
skills, multiple incidents of production, multiple raw materials,
and multiple procedures. Variability may also be the conse-
quence of social and economic processes: production of different
objects for different consuming segments; class, ritual, or ethnic
associations of decoration or form; different rates of production;
etc. Variability in material culture as a topic of archaeological
or ethnographic study certainly has not been ignored, but at-
tempts to put it into a theoretical framework have been rela-
tively few. One of the most thorough studies of variability in
archaeological data is Clarke's (1968) Analytical Archaeology,
which treats patterned variability in attributes, artifacts, and
assemblages as coded information about variability in the cul-
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
tural systems of which they are a part. 2 Rathje (1975) has pro-
posed a model of changing resource management behavior
through time that is based heavily on standardization vs. vari-
ability in archaeological data. He suggests a change from gen-
eral variability through standardization (mass production) to
local instances of elaboration and diversity in the course of a
system's evolution. Mortensen (1973) has developed a cumu-
lative frequency curve that shows changes in percentages of
new types (forms, styles, etc.) through time at a site, but he
does not suggest why these occur. Investigations of a plantation
site in the southeastern United States by Otto (1975) have
shown that higher-status residences (those of the owners) have
greater variability in kinds of material items in their household
inventories than lower-status residences (those of overseers and
slaves).
Balfet (1965) has studied contemporary North African pot-
tery manufacture and found that individual household manu-
factures tend to be diverse and variable, in contrast to the
standardized appearance of products of specialist groups. Foster
(1965: 58) uses ethnographic data from Tzintzuntzan, Mexico,
to place creative innovation in a social milieu, but at the same
time he stresses the role of the individual:
in a period of pottery style and production technique stability, all
knowledge will tend to become universal, and there will be no trade
secrets. Under these conditions, pottery styles are not likely to die
out as a consequence of what happens to only a few people [death,
moving out of a community, end of productive abilities, etc.]. Con-
versely, in a period of active experimentation to develop new styles
and improved techniques, pottery secrets will appear which will in-
crease the probability of loss of techniques and styles after very short
periods of production, as a consequence of something happening to
the person or people who alone control the secret.
Clearly, variability (and its converse, standardization) may
be observed and measured in all manner of nominal, ordinal,
and metric attributes of pottery: quantity, color, form, dimen-
sions, composition (kind, size, quantity of constituents), degree
of firing, and a host of observations on manufacturing tech-
nology. Observations on variability may be made essentially
synchronically (e.g., numbers of different forms, colors, or
decorative styles, range or standard deviation of dimensions)
or diachronically (in the sense of elaboration, substitution,
addition, or subtraction of the attribute states within any at-
tribute category through time in the ceramic complexes of a
site or region).
To examine the possibility of craft specialization, some
determination may be made of the relative amounts of variety
within segments of an archaeological ceramic complex at any
Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
point in time. This may be conceptualized as the analysis of
the distribution of observations on particular technological or
stylistic characteristics of pottery expressed as a histogram or
a distribution curve (Clarke 1968, Johnson 1975, Rice 1978a,
Stark 1979; see figure 1). Although Clarke holds that skew
curves indicate "noise" or random error, I feel that deviations
from the normal curve of particular attributes in a supposedly
homogeneous population may indicate underlying heterogeneity
that can aid in identifying restricted or specialized production.
I hypothesize that, where production of certain vessel classes
(ceremonial/utilitarian, stylistic, functional, formal, or what-
ever) is limited and in the hands of specialist producers, (1) the
distribution curve of properties for that class of pottery will
be skew, with a narrow peak, (2) the curve will be multimodal
and capable of being broken down into several smaller distribu-
tions, which will be skew and/or positively kurtotic, or (3) both
of the above may be true.
In all cases, the range or scale of the curve will likely be con-
ditioned to a large degree by two factors. One is the properties
of the resources available to and used by potters (e.g., degree
of redness by iron content, hardness by vitrification point, etc.).
If specialization reflects in part restricted or regulated access
to resources, then the products of such specialization should
have a narrow range of variation in properties, reflecting the
range inherent in the raw materials. Unimodality may indicate
the degree of consistency in achieving a desired result; multi-
modality may reflect the existence of multiple producers, each
with his own slightly distinctive product, or a predetermined
set of variants consistently being produced. The second factor
conditioning the range of the distribution curve is the hetero-
geneity of the data set chosen by the analyst. For example, is
it pottery from one site or a large region, from a 200-year phase
or a 1,500-year one? The direction and degree of skewness (cen-
tral tendency) suggests the general standard or modal product(s).
It will show the existence and direction of controllable or un-
controllable deviations from this standard or from concepts
about what a particular kind of pot looks like or how it is made
by particular producers (e.g., the skewing may indicate some
tendency toward overfiring, or some undersized jars, or what-
ever, around the modal category). The kurtosis or peakedness
Frequency

2 The following are the salient points of his work: (a) variety is in-

formation entering the system, either from outside or from a sub-

system (p. 89); (b) it may be accepted or rejected (p. 90); (c) it stems
"partly from human whim and partly from human inability to
reproduce repeatedly and exactly a given set of conditions" (p. 161);
(d) within a single artifact type and a short time period, each attribute
has a unimodal dispersion approximated by a curve varying between
the normal and a skew distribution (p. 161); (e) all the normal dis-
tributions of all the attributes can be visualized as a solid bell curve
integrating intersecting distributions arranged radially around the
centralizing values (p. 159); (f) distribution curves may vary from
the normal in skewness, kurtosis, and multimodality (p. 152); (g) a
skew curve for a homogeneous population of a given attribute may
be illusory or due to sampling errors, scale errors, and/or deliberate
directionality of error (p. 154); (h) all the states of an attribute are
simply alternative or disjunctive variety (p. 180); (i) the system
can change by increasing or decreasing the number of attributes
and/or by varying the number of attributes per artifact (increasing
or decreasing output of artifacts during the system's time trajectory
is a separate aspect at a separate level) (p. 165); (j) there is a tendency
toward increasing physical elaboration of the artifact type up to a
certain point, beyond which a tendency toward simplicity sets in
(p. 167); (kl a complex culture system is one in which more artifacts
are produced, implying a greater information content or variety FIG. 1. A model of change through time in the distribution curve of a
available for regulatory "insulation" in environmental interactions particular attribute, with changing mode, kurtosis, and spread (after
(p. 91). Clarke 1968:171, fig. 33).

Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981 221

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of the curve indicates the degree of consistency with which this
standard or mean is being achieved, or the variability or dis-
persion around that standard.
Another means of conceptualizing variety is in terms of di-
versity. Diversity is a descriptive concept widely used in eco-
logical studies to refer to the number, size, and/or proportion
of species in a community-its complexity or structure. A num-
ber of indices exist for summarizing the complexity of a set of
data (Pielou 1974). These indices permit measurement through
categorical or qualitative observations (e.g., species) of a
property analogous to variance, which can be calculated only
on quantitative data. Diversity has two major components:
the number of species, or "richness," and the distribution of
individuals among the species, or "evenness." In ecology, the
concept of diversity has a number of interpretations. High
diversity indicates high complexity, since the existence of more
species permits more varied kinds of interactions. Somewhat
controversial is the view that high diversity also indicates
stability-the ability to tolerate disturbance-and maturity,
reflecting the idea that at least some types of ecological com-
munities become more diverse (complex) as they mature.
Diversity indices have also been interpreted in terms of domi-
nance (the probability that randomly selected pairs of indi-
viduals will belong to the same species) and as indicators of
competition and predation (the probability of an individual's
encountering a member of another species) (Hurlburt 1971).
Several archaeological studies in the southeastern United
States have used one such measure of diversity, the Shannon-
Weiner (also called Shannon-Weaver, or Shannon) index,
principally to analyze diversity of faunal remains (Wing 1963,
Kohler 1978, Cumbaa 1975), but also to study diversity in
kinds of pottery (using "types" as "species") found at a site
with respect to living areas of Indians vs. Spanish (Kohler
1978, Loucks and Kohler 1978). The interpretive potential of
such indices is considerable: comparison of diversity (richness
and evenness) of assemblages from different contexts can indi-
cate differential or preferential access to goods or patterns of
exploitation or distribution. The measures of diversity could
also be brought into comparison of archaeological assemblages
through time or on a wider regional level for the purpose of
studying production and inferring patterns of distribution,
status, and activity areas. Diversity of types and varieties
within ceramic groups or wares or diversity of decorative styles
or forms within types, groups, or wares could be compared site-
to-site, area-to-area, phase-to-phase, or complex-to-complex.
For example, the diversity of elite vs. low-status, ceremonial
vs. utilitarian, early vs. late, or site-center vs. site-peripheral
pottery could be explored in terms of utilization of or differ-
ential access to, or distribution of, resources and products.
There are obvious analogies to such ecological terms for popula-
tion interactions as predation, competition, niche apportion-
ment-interactions which are increasingly complex in more
complex (diverse) systems.
Considered in terms of the distribution-curve model dis-
cussed earlier, richness indirectly reflects the range or number
of categories represented, while evenness is a more precise mea-
sure of the peakedness of the curve (skewness would not enter
in directly). In the context of pottery specialization, then, high
richness and high evenness in technological, decorative, and
formal data would tend to suggest use of a variety of resources
and/or the existence of numerous producers; low richness and
low evenness would suggest restricted access to resources, a
smaller number of producers, and/or mass production.
Thus, I suggest that the study of variety in artifacts through
time, conceptualized in terms of distribution curves or quanti-
tative indices of diversity, may be a useful approach to the
study of production. An increase in skewness or kurtosis, or a
decrease in evenness, is hypothesized to involve minimally (1)
an increasingly narrow concept or standard, on the part of
manufacturers and buyers alike, of what constitutes an ac-
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ceptable ceramic vessel in any category and (2) increasing skill
of potters in achieving that standard. Multimodality vs. uni-
modality in distribution may be interpretable as indicating the
existence of multiple production units or single ones: in other
words, craft specialists.
I shall propose an evolutionary model for pottery specializa-
tion elaborated from a general sequence proposed on the basis
of study of Highland Guatemala whitewares (Rice 1976a). This
model shares some general points with Rathje's (1975:414-15)
in that it is based on degrees of standardization or variety in
pottery. It differs, however, in stressing the incorporation of
ceramic technological data as an inferential tool in assessing
resource access and standardization of behavior and product.
In this it is akin to Balfet's (1965) observations concerning
diversity versus standardization in modern North African
pottery, comparing individual versus specialist group manu-
facture.
A TRIAL MODEL
For purposes of discussion, this evolutionary sequence is
broken down into steps, but these divisions are purely artificial.
A distinction is made between "elite" and "utilitarian" pottery,
but clearly a variety of overlapping functions and patterns of
production and usage are subsumed in these two categories.
The terms are simply a shorthand notation, the former referring
to pottery that is a luxury, high-status, or prestige commodity,
with ceremonial or special function, high value, low consump-
tion, and some kind of restricted distribution, while the latter
refers to low-status ceramic goods of widespread occurrence,
low value, and high consumption.
Step 1. Pottery making was no doubt initially a typical ac-
tivity in nearly every household. A simple technology, equal
access to resources, and minimal division of labor are charac-
teristic of primitive economies (the "domestic mode of pro-
duction"; Sahlins 1972). In an egalitarian or acephalous society,
in which access to resources and consumption of goods are
largely undifferentiated, pottery production at the household
level will likely be unstandardized, and more or less random
variations are likely to occur, reflecting individual differences
in raw-material sources and/or methods of production.
Expectations, or test implications, for a prespecialization or
nonspecialization level of ceramic production would include
the following:
1. There should be little uniformity in technological charac-
teristics such as kinds and proportions of clays and tempers
and (perhaps because of incomplete knowledge) firing condi-
tions.
2. Although similar styles of decoration and form reflect cur-
rent ideas ("mental templates") of what a bowl or jar should
look like, there should be variation based on idiosyncratic fac-
tors (skill, time spent, etc.).
3. Although "use"-functional distinctions should be ap-
parent (e.g., among forms), "social"-functional (i.e., status-
reinforcing) differences should not be evident. There should be
no class of pottery which can be inferred to be "elite" by virtue
of unusual appearance or unusual depositional context.
4. There should be small (e.g., household) concentrations of
similar paste, form, design, not an even distribution of these
traits over the site.
Step 2. Gradually potters may develop some form of low-
level informal specialization, for example, interhousehold ex-
change of pottery where one household cannot or chooses not to
make pottery. Increasingly, individuals or families who by
chance or design live closer to clay sources or are better potters
find themselves making more and more pottery, with which they
may enter into exchange relationships or gift giving. Pottery
manufacture may be associated with a lineage or other kin
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
 group which claims some territorial and probably heritable
prerogative to the exploitation of the clay deposits.
Test implications for an incipient-specialization stage would
include the following:
1. There should be increasing standardization of paste com-
position in some categories of pottery, perhaps reflecting
greater exploitation of particular kinds of clays or tempers that
work satisfactorily and/or to which potters have use rights.
2. There should be somewhat greater skill evident in the
technology of production and/or more consistency in manu-
facturing and firing.
3. Decorative motifs and styles should be less variable, with
accepted conventions as to motif, color, placement, and execu-
tion.
4. There should be wider areal distributions of the increas-
ingly standardized products.
Step 3. Over the long term, socioeconomic differentiation and
ranking proceed; goods are accumulated and disposed of by
certain more highly competitive, productive, and upwardly
mobile sectors of the society. Productive resources are generally
controlled by "localized self-sufficient kin-oriented social units"
(Dumond 1972:299). Gradually such control may be appropri-
ated by emerging elites as part of the basis for their emergence;
resource control is "the geographical expression of social struc-
ture" (Nash 1966:34). "Pooling" of goods (Pires-Ferreira and
Flannery 1976; cf. Peebles and Kus 1977) is likely and will be
evident earliest in elite or prestige commodities and/or scarce
resources. Because of the systemic interrelationships of all seg-
ments of society, these changes eventually make their impress
on pottery. Competition and rapid differentiation among social
groups may result in great innovation and elaboration of pot-
tery. For potters this may be a time of growing insecurity or
pressure as the demand for elite, ritual, or mortuary pottery
increases and perhaps calls for increased production. The con-
sequences are likely to be felt first in the area of elite goods.
Commodities based on scarce resources are probably increas-
ingly channeled into the hands of the emerging elite, both in
terms of access to the resources for their manufacture and in
terms of use of the finished product (personal use, gift giving,
trade). Thus,'the production of elite or special-function or high-
value ceramic goods is the first in which specialization will take
place. Exchange of these goods may be through a system of
circulation distinct from that of subsistence goods (Bohannan
1955, Salisbury 1962), further reinforcing social distance and
ranking distinctions. Also, elite goods may be traded out of
the society through networks controlled and maintained by the
elite.
Expectations or test implications for this stage would include
some of the following:
1. There should be unequal distributions of classes of pottery,
that is, an association of certain classes of pottery with elite
and related lineages (the beginnings of "social" functional or
status-reinforcing distinctions in pottery).
2. Elite/ceremonial/high-value goods should be distinguish-
able in part by decorative characteristics-a greater variety
of kinds and complexity of decoration, greater skill in execu-
tion, and perhaps rare or exotic materials (e.g., paints) or
motifs.
3. These elite/ceremonial/high-value goods should be dis-
cernible technologically: (a) Within classes (e.g., form), paste
characteristics should be relatively standardized or uniform.
(b) New pastes in standard elite formal or decorative styles
may appear, suggesting imitation wares and/or competition
among producers.
4. Elite/ceremonial/high-value goods (as defined techno-
logically above) should also be distinguishable with respect to
their uneven areal distribution: (a) Pottery with standardized
paste should be found in more restricted areas of a site or
region than pottery with more variable composition. (b) Such
pottery should also be found in particular contexts (e.g., mortu-
Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981
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Rice; EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
ary, ceremonial, elite residence). (c) Imitation elite pottery
may overlap the distribution of the elite/ceremonial/high-value
ware.
5. Comparison of the total pottery complex of this stage
with that of preceding stages should show a significant increase
in variety (diversity and "innovation curve") as increasing
differentiation and complexity in the system itself generate
increasing variety in the ceramic subsystem. (Technological
standardization appears in elite pottery; in other kinds, increas-
ing rather than decreasing richness and evenness reflect com-
petition for resources, or status, for buyers.)
Step 4. In stratified societies, social and economic variety are
highly evolved toward standardization of behavior and prod-
ucts. Much economic interaction may be taking place not as
free exchange but as tribute exacted by a chief. Sahlins (1972)
has called attention to the relationship between increasingly
centralized leadership and the beginning of surplus production.
It is at the point when an elite begins forcibly extracting pottery
as tribute and/or for trade that intensified rural production
begins. Some contemporary peasants, for example, will intensify
production and specialize toward the creation of a "surplus"
only if compelled to by the forcible removal of such surpluses
by a coercive higher power as a political elite or ritual structure
(Smith 1974, Wolf 1966).
Test implications for this stage would include the following:
1. It should be possible to identify standardized locations of
pottery making (craft "wards" or "barrios") and perhaps,
through time, a reduction in their number and an increase in
their size.
2. There should be indications of mass production such as
(a) tools facilitating rapid and uniform production (e.g., molds),
(b) standardized form dimensions, details, and/or sizes, par-
ticularly in utilitarian wares, (c) vessel forms that stack or nest
easily for compact storage and transport, and (d) storage areas
for raw materials and finished products in quantity.
3. There should be a broad distribution of standardized
forms, types, etc.
4. Nonelite classes of pottery should show standardized
pastes.
5. There should be evidence for elaboration in decorative
aspects of elite/ceremonial/high-value pottery: more colors
used, more decorative motifs, greater freedom or elaboration
in their placement and combination, greater variety in their
mode of execution (painting, incising, modelling), and so forth.
(This is the ceramic expression of the third stage of Rathje's
[1975:415] trajectory: the generation of increased variety in
specific products at the local-in this case, elite-level.)
These four steps are summarized in table 1.
A TEST OF THE MODEL
A test of some of, these propositions was attempted using the
ceramic analysis and typological descriptions of material from
the Maya site of Barton Ramie in Belize (Gifford 1976). The
ceramic descriptions were tabulated in a number of relevant
categories for each of five complexes in the sequence; a sixth
complex, Floral Park, which marks the apparent intrusion of
foreign elements into the indigenous tradition, was eliminated
from the calculations. Tabulations included variability in the
following classificatory (type-variety system) and descriptive
data: (1) number of wares; (2) number of groups; (3) number
of types; (4) number of varieties; (5) number of different
details of form noted for vessels within a type (including such
categories as different kinds of bowls, jars, etc., but also details
of rim and lip and presence of handles, supports, or flanges);
(6) number of different characteristics of pastes, including vari-
ants of temper, color, texture, thickness, firing, etc.; (7) number
223
 TABLE 1
CERAMIC VARIABILITY AS AN INDICATOR OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION

CERAMIC ATTRIBUTE CLASS

CULTURE PASTE DECORATION"

COMPLEXITY
CONTINUUM Utilitarian Elite/ Ceremonial Utilitarian Elite/ Ceremonial

Arephr Variable Variable

Less variable Variable Standard motifs and

execution
Ranked
Competitive variety Standardized Competitive variety

l
Stratified Standardized (mass-
produced)
Standardized Standardized (mass-
produced)
Elaborated

NOTE: The cells represent continua rather than discrete steps.

• Including comparatively minor variations in details of form (lip, base, etc.).

of decorative variants, excluding motifs but including method
of execution, such as incising, punctation, painting, and decora-
tive additions (e.g., flanges, appliques).
Variability between complexes was compared by calculating
richness and evenness for each complex using the Shannon-
Weaver diversity index, with natural log base (the resultant
figure expressed in units called "nats"). Richness was mea-
sured by the formula ii= - "I-(n1/N) log (n1/N) and evenness
by the formula H/Hmax• Form, technological, and decorative
variability were calculated as the number of variants divided
by the number of sherds in the major type of a ceramic group,
multiplied by 1,000, i.e., as number of variants per 1,000
sherds. Except in the decorative variant calculations, groups
containing fewer than 225 sherds were excluded to avoid dis-
tortions caused by excessively small sample size. The trends
exhibited in these calculations are shown in table 2 and figures
2 through 7. The scale of the x-axis is in years, subdivided into
the phases identified for the site. The figures obtained by the
calculations have been placed at the midpoints of each phase.
Comparing the complexes as a whole through time, it is clear
that the richness component of diversity increases (table 2);
there are more wares, groups, and types represented in the col-
lections, as well as more sherds in general. The number of
varieties stays roughly the same, however. The ceramic system
The evenness component of diversity presents a slightly
different picture (fig. 3). In the Preclassic the unslipped groups
have greater evenness than the slipped, reaching a peak in the
Late Preclassic and declining thereafter. Slipped groups have
an undulating curve, peaking in the Early Classic, declining in
the early Late Classic, and then rising above the curve for the
unslipped in the late Late Classic. High evenness suggests the
existence of a broad spectrum of acceptable ceramic categories,
with little preference for or selection of particular ones. A
variety of products, a variety of producers, and/ or lack of
standardization are possible explanations for such a situation.
Low evenness suggests greater selectivity, functional or status
specialization of certain kinds of products, the existence of
specialized producers, and/ or the standardization of certain
categories of products. By such logic, it would appear that at
Barton Ramie greater evenness in the Preclassic unslipped
1.7
16
15
1.4

is becoming more complex, with more and larger units. More

pottery is being made, filling a greater variety of more special- 1J

ized functions for a greater body of consumers.

12
Variability within complexes may be compared by calcu-
lating richness (ii.) for slipped versus unslipped ceramic groups
in each complex. The slipped wares (fig. 2) show increasing
diversity, reaching a peak in the Early Classic, declining in the
10
early Late Classic, then rising again. The unslipped groups
likewise peak in the Early Classic but decline steadily in sub-
sequent phases, and their diversity is considerably below that
of the slipped groups.

TABLE 2
NUMBERS OF STANDARD TYPOLOGICAL UNITS IDENTIFIED FOR
EACH CERAMIC COMPLEX AT BARTON RAMIE

VARIETIES
CERAMIC
COMPLEX SHERDS WARES GROUPS TYPES Named Total
800 700 600 500 400 JOO 200 100 0 100 200 JOO 400 500 600 700 800
Mount Hope- T,- Spanish
Jenney Creek . 7,452 3 6 15 15 41
Barton Creek. 8,065 3 6 17 7 42
Jenney Creek

Middle
Barton Creek

Late
Floral Park

Termtnal
Hermitage

Early
'"
R"" Lookout

Late
Hermitage._ .. 29,211 4 12 25 21 42 Preclass1c Classic
Tiger Run .... 21,014 3 11 24 18 43
Spanish
FIG. 2. Ceramic group richness as expressed by ii. Solid line, slipped;
Lookout. .. _ 57,703 6 17 42 28 so broken line, unslipped.

224 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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 Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION

followed by an increase, then a similar sharp decline and rise in

unslipped, then black, and finally polychrome (no rise is noted
I0 in this last category). It is interesting that the unslipped groups
exhibit a marked rise in variability in the Late Preclassic, prior
to the decline, suggesting an increase in producers, resources
used, and/or manufacturing methods prior to rapid stan-
dardization.
Decorative variability was measured in two ways. One way
was analogous to measurement of form and technological
variability-i.e., simply by counting the number of decorative
j modes and dividing by the number of sherds per type (fig. 6).
Unslipped groups are very low in decorative variability, as
might be expected. Both black and red groups rise sharply in
decorative variability from the Middle to the Late Preclassic,
after which red groups rise further to a peak in Tiger Run, then
decline markedly in Spanish Lookout. Black pottery declines
in decorative variability to a low in Tiger Run and then
increases. Polychromes likewise drop from Early Classic to
early Late Classic, then rise steeply in Spanish Lookout.
The second way of looking at decorative variability was
somewhat less direct. This was to count the number of named
and unspecified varieties within all groups in a complex (i.e.,
the number of varieties within red groups, within unslipped
800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 100 200 300
400 500 600 ' 1'00 800
groups, etc.), on the premise that the formal naming of varieties
Jenney Creek
I Barton Creek
I
Mount Hope-
Floral Park Hermitage IT1-
ii~n
Spanish
Lookout or designation of potential' varieties is often (though certainly
Middle I Late I Terminal Early I Late not always) on the basis of decorative variation. In these cal-
Preclass1c Classic culations (fig. 7), the unslipped show a sharp rise in the Late
Preclassic (like the rise in technological variability in unslipped
FIG. 3. Ceramic group evenness as expressed by ii/ H max.; Solid line, groups at this time) and then a sharp decline, followed by a
slipped; broken line, unslipped. slight rise in Spanish Lookout. Red groups decline continuously
throughout all phases, reaching lows close to that of unslipped
groups in the Late Classic. The decorative variability curve of
groups argues for a lack of specialization or standardization black groups closely corresponds to the curve for form vari-
and the existence of a variety of producers, whereas by the Late ability, declining from the Late Preclassic to the Early Classic,
Classic production of all ceramic categories was probably far
more standardized. Explanation of what is going on in slipped
groups, especially the rise in evenness in the Late Classic, is
more complex. A greater number of slipped groups occurring
in approximately equal quantities suggests more producers
competing in manufacturing a greater variety of products for 30

a greater variety of consumers or functions. I suggest that this

elaboration parallels the elaboration within the social hierarchy
that was occurring in the Late Classic period (cf.Joyce Marcus's 25
[personal communication) observation that the site hierarchy
in the lowlands evolves from two to four levels). Competition
for status is likely to be reflected in competition in producing 20
more and different kinds of status goods, slipped pottery being
among these goods.
Form variability was examined for unslipped, red, black,
15
and polychrome groups (fig. 4). It is lower in the unslipped
groups in all but the Late Preclassic and Early Classic com-
plexes, showing a gradual decline from Jenney Creek to Tiger
Run, at which point it levels off. The slipped groups show a IO

pattern of decline in variability, slight increase, then decline

again. The increase occurs earliest in red pottery, in the Early
Classic. If the model holds true, the slipped groups, red first,
may be elite wares beginning the trend toward standardization.
The transition occurs more gradually in the unslipped groups
(perhaps unslipped pottery continued to be made by a variety
of producers), but these are ultimately more standardized than
any of the slipped wares save the polychromes. In the Late
Classic, red wares serve a variety of utilitarian functions (per- Jenney Creek Barton Creek
Mount Hope-
Floral Park Hermitage
Ti-
il~n
Spanish
Lookout
haps storage/serving-forms are primarily large bowls and Middle Late Termmal Early Late
jars) and in their variability may be more like unslipped than Predass1c Classic
like black and/ or polychrome.
In technological characteristics (paste composition, texture, FIG. 4. Form variability of major type in each group. Solid line, black;
color, firing, thickness) a similar sort of pattern emerges (fig. 5). broken line, red; broken and dotted line, polychrome; dotted line, un-
There is a sharp decline in paste variability in red wares earliest, slipped.

Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981 225

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 and the Late Preclassic. This increase occurs in paste and
40
\ decoration though not in form. I suggest that at this time red
\ wares as an elite, special-access or special-function class of
35
\ pottery may have 'been manufactured by fewer people, but a
large number of potters were making unslipped utilitarian
\ wares. Forms were becoming slightly standardized, but a wide
\
30
\
,.
"1 range of technological characteristics and decorative styles (in-
cluding incising, appliques, painting, polishing, etc.) suggest a
lack of pressure toward conformity, a variety of acceptable
\ I \ I: styles or personal tastes, and probably a large number of pro-
25 \ I
I \
\ ducers. Additional insights into this phenomenon come from
\,' ' \ I: the fact that the Late Preclassic has in many areas been de-
I
,\ \
\
\ I
scribed as a period of population growth, land shortage, and
general social stress. One response to this kind of stress may
20
I
I
\ \
\ have been for a greater number of people to go into the pottery
I
I
I

\
\
\ I business, especially producing low-value/high-consumption

---
\
I goods.
15

I
I \ \
y_......___l"-. \
\ I
The other deviation is that in form and paste (and, in black
I
I
\....- \
\
\ :, groups, in decoration) the sharp decline in variability noted
\ first in red groups is followed characteristically by an increase
IO
\ x'\ in variability, which in most cases then declines further (an
\ ____ / \1 exception is the increase in paste variability in black and un-
\I slipped groups in Spanish Lookout). These peaks of variability
may represent the competitive variety generation noted in
800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 Joo 800
Step 3 of the model following initial standardization of elite
I wares, or Rathje's (1975) increased diversity on local levels. In
Jenney Creek
I Barton Creek
I
Mount Hope-
Floral Park Hermitage
Ti-
ii~n
Spanish
Lookout
black groups and in polychromes this increase occurs in the
Middle
I Late I Termmal Early I Late
Preclassic Classic
Classic following the Floral Park intrusion (whose potential
ceramic consequences have been ignored in this exercise), and
FIG. 5. Technological variability of major type in each group. Solid some of the increased variety may be due to forces in the
line, black; broken line, red; broken and dotted line, polychrome; ceramic system created by that intrusion. Another view of this
dotted line, unslipped. increased variability may again tie in to competition within
the social system. As a new class of ceramics (for example, poly-
chromes) enters the system and is identified primarily as an
rising in the early Late Classic, then declining again in Spanish elite or special-function good, other ceramic categories (e.g.,
Lookout. Polychromes, predictably, show the highest decora-
tive variability throughout the Classic, but even that declines
in Spanish Lookout.
How might all these computations be construed as a test of 180

the model? In very general terms, the x-axis on the graphs

represents time, the y-axis variability. Peaks in the graphed
I
lines for each ceramic category (e.g., group) indicate increased
variability, and the position of each category relative to
160
I
others indicates relative variability on particular characteristics 140 I
(e.g., form, paste, decoration) vis-a-vis other categories.
Through time, diversity in the sense of richness, i.e., more
120 \/ :
iv
differentiation through more categories, has been seen to in-
crease, except on the varietal level. But when variability in three - J\ A
major ceramic attribute classes (form, paste, decoration) is 100 ,--- - ·-✓ .I
measured through time, controlled by the size (number of / I
sherds) of the ceramic units involved, patterns of increasing I
standardization can be seen.
80

/ I
Red groups show the earliest and most abrupt decline, one I I
that occurs in all variables (paste, form, and one of the decora- 60

tive measurements) considered. This may indicate the re-

I
stricted access to resources and earliest standardization of elite I
or special-function categories of pottery hypothesized in Step 2
40
I
of the model. Similar sharp declines in all categories of vari-
ability show up successively in unslipped, then black, and 20

finally polychrome groups as the manufacture of these becomes

increasingly routinized. It is perhaps significant that by Spanish
IO
--- ----
Lookout the red groups are at the same level of variability as
utilitarian unslipped groups (and in paste variability are even 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 roo 800
lower); given the kinds of forms represented (jars and large Mount Hope- T1- Spamsh

bowls), this suggests that sometime during the Classic red

Jenney Creek
I Barton Creek
I Floral Park Hermitage Jil:n Lookout

Middle I Late I Tennmal Early I Late

wares became major utilitarian types (perhaps still elite or high- Prec\ass1c Classic
status).
Two exceptions to the general trend toward standardization FIG. 6. Decorative variability of major type in each group. Solid line,
through time may be seen. One occurs in unslipped groups, black; broken line, red; broken and dotted line, polychrome; dotted line,
where there is a sharp increase in variability between the Middle unslipped.

226 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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 Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
90

further difficulty is that the test of some of the model's proposi-

80 tions was not performed on an ideal data set.
The advantage of the model is its capacity for making craft
70
specialization operational for archaeological study diachroni-
cally and synchronically. It combines new kinds of ceramic
technometric methods and data (on paste composition and
60 I
"\
I \
firing) with more traditional types of ceramic analysis (form,
I \
I \ decoration, "typology," style). A major synchronic focus is on
50
I
I \
\ \ the study of ceramic variability through the distribution, range,
I \
/ \ and covariation of measurements of certain properties, such as
"-._ I \ amount of temper, hardness, degree of firing, color, mineralogy,
'- I \
40 Y, \ and chemical composition. This identifies the standards or cus-
I '-... \

--
I '-.. \ toms which potters recognized and more or less consistently
JO
/ ........
..__ \
\
adhered to through differential exploitation of raw materials
and the skilled manipulation of those materials. Further, since
\
\
-....-.\.... many of these variables may be related directly to raw materials,
20
\-\ comparable measurements on properties of raw clays and fired
pottery can undeniably be useful in trying to pinpoint areas of
\ \ manufacture by identifying resources used.
10
\ \ Pottery specialization is hypothesized to begin in the area of
\ .... _,,,,,,,.,,,,.
"'><
elite/ceremonial/high-value products as a function of differen-
tial access to resources and increasing concentration of power
or wealth in a particular social segment. It is hypothesized to
be first manifested in standardized paste attributes (composi-
Jenney Creek Barton Creek
Mount Hope--
Floral Park
tion and firing). While the test of the model showed that in red
Middle Late Terminal Early Late groups at Barton Ramie reduction in paste variability was ac-
Preclass1c Classic companied by reduction in form and decorative variability, it
might be argued that the ca. 900 years from the beginning of
FIG. 7. Decorative variability of major type in each group. Solid line, the Middle Preclassic (Jenney Creek) to the end of the Late
black; broken line, red; broken and dotted line, polychrome; dotted line, Preclassic (Barton Creek) does not provide sufficient temporal
unslipped. sensitivity to demonstrate the primacy of technological stan-
dardization.
With growing sociocultural differentiation there are probably
black wares) may increase in elaboration to meet the demand idiosyncratic fluctuations of periods of competitive variability
for such elaborated or status goods, perhaps in "middle-class" in terms of exploitation of new resources, new methods, new
goods or by a sort of hybridization process. In any case, the forms. or new decorations. In stratified societies behavior,
increased ceramic variety reinforces the idea of heightened methods, pastes, and forms are highly standardized, particu-
variability in general resulting from a progressively more di- larly in low-value/high-consumption utilitarian goods, with
verse and complex cultural system. It also suggests the existence pottery production increasingly an exercise in mass production
of competition between producers and/ or the organizers of pro- and cost control. Elaboration exists chiefly in the area of elite
duction for resources and for status, the existence of imitations, or ceremonial goods, where access to rare resources and the
the creation of new specialized functions in which pottery is financial rewards for skilled artisans or innovators can make
necessary, and so forth. such costly (in time and resources) activities feasible.

SUMMARY
Comments
The model proposed here considers ceramic craft specialization
as a systemic process evolving in tandem with the other social, by WILLIAM Y. ADAMS
political, and demographic changes subsumed under the head- Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lex-
ing of sociocultural evolution, differentiation, and complexity. ington, Ky. 40506, U.S.A. 2 XI 80
It represents the process of gradual selection of or restriction I cannot evaluate the reliability of Rice's model with reference
to a particular occupational mode out of the alternative possi- to her own Maya data, except to suggest that her "test" seems
bilities presented by environmental diversity or scarcity and to involve a good deal of intuitive judgment. In the broadest
the culturally conditioned perceptions of that environment. sense the model does seem applicable to the Old World ceram-
Specialization is an evolving part of the processes of centraliza- ics that are more familiar to me. Here the emergence of state-
tion and segmentation, not merely the result of these processes. level society was concurrent with the introduction of the pot-
It is an adaptive process of regularized socioeconomic inter- ter's wheel (Childe 1954:198-204), supplementing but not
relationships for productive utilization of a society's environ- fully supplanting the older technique of building by hand. The
ment. result was a quantum increase in the sheer volume of pottery
A number of questions have not been addressed by this and, of course, in the variety of forms and wares, while at the
model: the role of part-time vs. full-time specialists and how to same time the products of individual factories came to show
distinguish them archaeologically; whether control is central- a high degree of standardization.
ized or decentralized; what the motivations are for intensifica- A practical limitation in Rice's approach would appear to
tion and surplus production. In addition, the model, in its crude lie in the difficulty, in many areas, of defining appropriate
formulation here, essentially presupposes unilineal evolution boundaries within which to measure ceramic variability. Her
from acephalous through ranked to stratified societies. A own material is, I take it, all derived from one site in Belize,

Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981 227

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 but we are not specifically told that this is a meaningful unit
of study. I know of a good many individual sites in which the
ceramics do not provide an accurate reflection of variability
in the surrounding region (Adams 1978), even though there
was a close systemic integration between the town and its en-
virons.
Ceramic material from ancient Egypt suggests another im-
portant caution: the emergence of social and political elites
does not invariably result in the production of "elite" pottery
wares. During most of Egyptian history, and down at least to
Roman and Byzantine times, pottery was not developed as an
artistic medium or as a status symbol. Even the royal tombs
have not yielded vessel forms or styles that cannot also be
found in the tombs and dwellings of peasants. The blue-
painted "Amarna ware" of the 18th Dynasty (Lucas and Har-
ris 1962 :384-85) represents a partial exception, but it is the
proverbial exception that proves the rule.
The author is clearly aware that her model provides only
a partial explanation for increases ( or decreases) in ceramic
diversity and standardization. Viewed from the opposite di-
rection, this means that such increases cannot themselves be
viewed a priori as evidence for the development of more com-
plex and differentiated socioeconomic systems. My own work
with medieval Nubian ceramics has demonstrated that there
were major fluctuations in the amount of diversity and of
standardization that were unaccompanied by significant changes
in the social, political, or economic spheres (Adams 1979). At
some periods nearly all vessels were decorated (thereby pre-
senting added scope for stylistic diversity), while at other
periods the majority were undecorated; at some periods the
Nubians were receiving pottery from several different factories,
while at others their material came nearly all from one source.
Within a span of a few centuries the number of vessel forms
in regular use fluctuated between a low of about 20 and a high
of about 80.
The ultimate limitation of Rice's model, in my view, is ex-
pressed in the first paragraph of her summary. "The model ...
considers ceramic craft specialization as a systemic process
evolving in tandem with the other social, political, and demo-
graphic changes subsumed under the heading of sociocultural
evolution, differentiation, and complexity." But evolving craft
specialization does not have entirely predictable results in the
areas of stylistic diversity and uniformity, because to some
extent style always marches to its own drummer. The anthro-
pologist Kroeber ( esp. 1944) and the sociologist Sorokin
( 193 7) stand almost alone among social scientists in their
efforts to deal with the problem of variable creativity in other
than material terms. Their efforts have often been condemned
as unscientific (cf. Harris 1968:330-31), but in my view they
deserve praise rather than blame for venturing onto ground
where few of their colleagues have dared to tread. In a more
limited way I have tried also to deal with certain troubling
patterns of stylistic fluctuation in Nubian culture that do not
respond readily to determinist explanations (Adams 1977:
671-78).
Rice has developed, I would conclude, a useful ad hoc model
to frame her own data, but its practical applicability in other
areas remains somewhat doubtful.
by JOSEPH w. BALL
Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University,
San Diego, Calif. 92115, U.S.A. 14 XI 80
Rice's paper represents an interesting and worthwhile approach
to a question of much concern but little resolution among pre-
historians. Her background review of nonsubsistence produc-
tion specialization is useful, and her model itself, if not exactly
innovative, is thought-provoking and deserving of field testing.
I am frequently left uncomfortable by the facile transfer of
228
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concepts from the realm of biotic-community ecology to that
of sociocultural behavior, and Rice's employment of the rich-
ness/evenness measures to some extent illustrates why. Apart
from the selective-adaptive implications of the measure, it
seems questionable whether archaeological ceramic richness
and evenness can be interpreted in terms of degree of pro-
duction specialization rather than as a function of various
interacting factors involving availability, marketing, access,
and deposition as well as production mode and desirability.
Rice makes innovative and imaginative use of published
type-variety data in her own "test" of the proposed model and
by so doing instructively demonstrates the potential of such
typological data for manipulation and use beyond what their
generator may have had in mind. I must question the conclu-
siveness or even the validity of her test, however, on the
grounds that the Barton Ramie ceramic-complex richness and
evenness distributions described by her are far more likely
attributable to depositional and use-related factors than to
those of production mode. Rice's model fails to allow for the
filter effect on the archaeological record of such factors as
intercommunity marketing modes, intracommunity access limi-
tations, item availability, and item consumption levels, among
others, while her Barton Ramie test ignores the effects of
intrasettlement social and functional variability and archaeo-
logical sample derivation. That her richness/evenness indices
have some interpretive significance I do not question. What
I doubt is that this is in any direct and facile manner relatable
to production mode. Similarly, Rice's model overall is valuable
as a trial step toward addressing a research question of de-
cided interest to prehistorians. What it requires by way of
improvement is a clearer, more sophisticated recognition of
and means to control for the numerous factors generally oper-
ating between the systemic production and the archaeological
recovery of prehistoric pottery vessels.
by WHITNEY M. DAVIS
Department of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art,
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 475 Huntington Ave., Boston,
Mass. 02115, U.S.A. 10 x 80
Although unnecessarily encumbered with jargon, this paper
does ask the right questions. The conclusions, however, do not
particularly advance understanding, although in the current
climate of theory this is not wholly Rice's fault. In this short
space I cannot adequately substantiate my criticisms, as I
cannot detail the alternatives.
One fundamental difficulty arises from assuming too close
a connexion between social complexity, social stratification,
and craft specialization. Cross-cultural study shows that craft
specialization may appear in what the author's evolutionary
scheme would call a "simple" society. Here, the economically
or technologically simple basis of specialization may conceal
extremely complex relations of some other kind. In the lan-
guage of this paper, economically "equal" individuals can be,
and often are, differentiated by other determinants. Rice makes
passing reference to some of these-"skills, interests, and
needs"-and I wish she had developed the point. Within the
narrow frame of reference she adopts it seems a contradiction
to speak of "specialization" in a simple society: yet as the
point must be made empirically, our theory must allow for it.
"Skills, interests, and needs," unpredictable at the most vul-
gar (and uninteresting) economic level, vary from individual
to individual for powerful biological and psychological as well
as social and cultural reasons and may leave an archaeological
trace only very indirectly. Nonetheless, a discussion of the
origins and evolution of craft specialization would take these
seemingly irrational intangibles as a better point of departure
than the peculiar formalization Rice has adopted. This ac-
count, assumed with little supporting argument, apparently
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
 regards craft specialization as a certain rational organization
of labour in relation to resources and goes so far as to claim
that segments of society "grant" one another "resource rights."
Although I am aware of the anthropological tradition from
which these ideas come, this is appallingly muddy. We are not
told, for example, who within a society holds these notions
about his own activity or circumstances or why he should
do so. Rational motives may of course operate unconsciously,
but in this more important regard we are not told whether the
rational self-interest of a particular ( and dominant?) social
group or a rational division of labour adopted by all self-
interested groups in a society should be held responsible for
this "regulated and regularized" system of access to resources.
Defining craft specialization as a pattern of access to re-
sources in which "a certain kind of resource is restricted to a
particular social segment" allows the author to launch various
schematic and statistical proposals-although the reader won-
ders about various possibilities which seem to have been tacitly
discounted. How do we talk about two crafts using the same
resource, or about two competing branches of one craft using
multiple resources? And how widely do we want to understand
a "resource"? Should labour be included? What about items
manufactured by others but required in further manufacture?
In technologically "simple" societies, the subtleties of private
interdependence, from which political structures and ritual
activities often derive, may be based upon such "layering" of
resources and kinds of access to them. And in the complex
"stratified" societies, many different resources are exploited
for the subordinate as well as for any elite group: indirectly
but no less importantly, society as a whole possesses "access"
to resources which may be confronted materially by only a
small segment of society. A more generous notion of "access"
to resources would enable us to see that the effect-and pur-
pose ?-of craft specialization is to broaden, manyfold, overall
social access to resources. Furthermore, the segments of so-
ciety engaged in material contact with the unworked resources
to some often critical degree are constrained by those seg-
ments which obtain only indirect access but use the worked
resources. There is thus no special reason to expect craft spe-
cialization to be simply or specifically associated with an elite
capable of extracting obedience from other social groups.
Social groups exercising other than elite political or eco-
nomic power-for instance, religious, ritual, artistic, or bio-
logical power-may command access to certain resources and
directly or indirectly constitute a craft specialty. Rice's model
will not help us to predict or identify such cases; only full-
scale analysis of the routine, the social, the- artistic, and the
psychological function and meaning of the various products
will do. (Social structure and material culture can be mutually
illuminating, but a level of meaning always mediates.) Sadly,
the meaning of what is made is hardly approached in this
paper.
Clearly, many of the author's assumptions have been adopted
because they might help us to predict what sort of trace a
craft specialty will leave in the archaeological record. Rice
seems to me to move beyond the problematic initial definitions
to phrase the archaeological problem clearly. Other determi-
nants (not ideal in themselves) are now brought in. Even at
this level, however, the narrow conception of stratification and
specialization creeps in.
Rice feels that variability results from slight deviations ac-
cumulating with repetitions and from "social and economic
processes." Although the various kinds of "process" men-
tioned so briefly may be crucial in determining production or,
more interestingly, in encouraging innovation or experiment,
for some of those cited I do not see how we can statistically
detect this effect. Otto's study, at least as quoted here, seems
to reveal only the obvious, and Rice's summary includes a
characterization of specialization which makes no advance on
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Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
that assumed from the beginning. Apart from the fact that the
situation varies widely from culture to culture, we face a
problem in the idea of a "type" which becomes more or less
"standard" in craft production. What we can detect quanti-
tatively about the type may suggest to some observers that
production is standardized, but standardized "types" and
"styles" may be themselves canonical or precanonical, conven-
tional or unconventional. We should want to give each of these
possibilities a different index of value in interpretation. In
other words, the social or historical context may not be pre-
dictable from the so-called quantitative data, and production
per se may reveal nothing about meaning or context.
Adding this statistically useful but dangerously simplifying
notion of variability to the "access-to-resources" definition of
craft specialization, we get a remarkably involuted hypothesis:
"if specialization reflects in part restricted or regulated access
to resources, then the products of such specialization should
have a narrow range of variation in properties, reflecting the
range inherent in the raw materials." The logic or necessity
of this proposition eludes me. Perhaps it is only a tautology:
by definition, a resource cannot "produce" a manufactured
item with properties it is impossible to develop from that re-
source. No matter how specialized or learned, the alchemists
couldn't make gold from stones. That the products of special-
ization should have narrow ranges of properties (from example
to example) because of the restricted access to resources does
not follow at all and says nothing about the fact that some
resources are almost infinitely plastic and the repertory of
finished products may exhibit (statistically) an incredible
variability. Exactly where pottery's possibilities and limitations
may fall in this regard, although crucial to the argument, is
a matter not really addressed. And finally, specialization as
such has nothing necessarily to do with variability, at least by
the terms of this proposition; the products of nonspecialists
could be just as determined by the inherent properties of and
access to the resources as specialist products.
Perhaps Rice senses the slipperiness of all of this; next we
are introduced to variability slightly redefined as "diversity."
Possibly "comparison of diversity ... of assemblages from dif-
ferent contexts can indicate differential or preferential access
to goods or patterns of exploitation or distribution." The
problem would then be to derive specialization from this re-
lationship. Here, not surprisingly, we fall back again on the
identity of standardization and specialization adopted earlier:
"low richness and low evenness would suggest restricted access
to resources, a smaller number of producers, and/or mass pro-
duction." Once again, one can conceive of craft specializations
in which the mirror reverse holds true, with "high richness"
(that is, many types) at "high evenness" (that is, almost
equally dividing up the total number of individual examples
made at any given time). Examples of what I mean here would
include many classical and earlier Mediterranean pottery work-
shops and, interestingly, many early flint- or stone-working
sites.
Although theoretically absolute diversity is possible, and
theoretically "richness" and "evenness" are useful character-
izations of this "world," for other reasons having to do with
genetic, functional and morphological, and environmental con-
straints actual observed habitation occupies very narrow cor-
ridors of the "possible space" on the x/y/z planes. For the
metaphor to have any historical plausibility we must recognize
the degree to which the constraints influence the extent and
nature of "diversity" in production. The author does not sug-
gest, and I think within this frame of reference cannot recog-
nize, that for an individual household's jack-of-all-trades, for
a craft-specialist group or class, and for a competing group of
specialist classes products can equally well be highly different
229
one from another or completely standardized or, most likely,
some combination of the two. Statistics will elicit a descrip-
tion of the particular permutation in this last regard for any
given society but will say nothing about whether the permu-
tation reflects specialization.
This being so, how can we identify specialization? Only the
historical investigation of the meaning of what is made will be
revealing; archaeological traces may only be indirect and sta-
tistically undetectable. I think the problem with the theory
as it stands comes out most clearly when it is called upon to
predict what, historically and archaeologically, we should ex-
pect to observe.
I shall cite just one difficulty of many for each step in the
trial model. (Rice's warning that a continuum and not discrete
stages is intended is well-taken; what seems to be a routine
evolutionism with an economic motor at least acquires some
subtlety by this.) "'Use'-functional" distinctions are often not
apparent in "primitive economies"; the kind of archaeological
record we are told to expect (Step 1, Point 4) often never
occurs (and what about cemeteries?). The problem may be
traced to the notion that specialization ought not to occur in
such economies. I do not see that "low-level informal special-
ization" entails wider "areal distributions" of the product
( Step 2, Point 4), especially when specialization is held to re-
flect limited access to resources. Are we to infer that limited
access may be associated with wide demands and thus wide
distribution? Couldn't we conceive of wide distribution, alter-
natively or in addition, as a reflection of "universal" produc-
tion? The characterizations of society at Step 3 are likewise
not empirically helpful. Here we meet the last major propo-
sition: "the production of elite or special-function or high-
value ceramic goods is the first [sector of production] in which
specialization will take place." Again, why not the mirror re-
verse? A small group may initially control (or alternatively,
be delegated) the production of a universally consumed, uni-
versally desired, "nonelite," routinely functional, low-value
good ( such as daily pottery) ; why it should do so and the
possibility that its ability to produce "elite" goods may depend
upon this other relation are issues we do not hear much about
in this paper. With these "elite" goods we leave the realm of
craft specialization and enter the history of art; that entirely
new and higher-order interests, relations, and psychology begin
to operate at this level is a fact better kept hidden lest ir-
reparable damage be inflicted by statistical method. In art, of
course, the one anomalous occurrence, the deviation or margin
of error in quantitative study, may be the most revealing for
the sociologist, psychologist, or art historian. Step 4 continues
a blurring of distinction between craft specialty, industry, and
art, although Point 5 here seems tacitly to recognize that the
standardization supposedly characteristic of this level breaks
down when "craft" becomes "art."
The "test of the trial model" is difficult to assess. The com-
putations are no doubt valid, but as few historical corrobora-
tions are offered we cannot know whether some of the inter-
pretations are quite arbitrary, reflecting the narrowness of the
general views discussed above. Reasoning from preconceived
theory to archaeological fact, paradoxically the theory seems
to be in turn founded upon a narrow reading of a particular
set of archaeological facts. Only specialists will be able to
judge whether something similar happens with the "test." And
even if it is free from arbitrariness, it is hardly a proof of
ideas which, as noted above, are not generalizable. In reading it
without detailed familiarity with the archaeology, I thought
the test an interesting exercise and quietly sensitive to the pos-
sible nuances of its specific culture-although explicit consider-
ation of these nuances is ruled out in favour of programmatic
illustrations of the main theses, which, not being generalizable,
are a poor substitute for description and informed interpreta-
tion.
230
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I don't think we have learned much from all of this-in-
cluding these comments, in which I cannot erect an alternative
-about the evolution of craft specialization in pottery pro-
duction. To let everyone know we are being "processual" and
"systemic" these days it appears that we must all talk about
evolution; it is a crime that the revealing and rigorous theo-
ries of modern biology are so often parodied in the metaphors
of social science. Social stratification sometimes involves craft
specialization (Near Eastern archaeology brilliantly demon-
strated this decades ago), but this is hardly a necessary or
a universal relationship. As a presupposition it will therefore
support only a pseudo-theory; there are deeper factors to be
explored. The agreement with Adams ( 1979) of many com-
mentators on the "noncorrelation of ceramic and major cul-
tural change" should alert us to the fact that we still need to
approach craft specialization from within and from without
to understand what it is, what it means, why it variously
appears when and where it does, and how we may securely
identify and interpret its existence.
by TIMOTHY EARLE
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los
Angeles, Calif. 90024, U.S.A. 22 x 80
As Rice states, archaeologists have concentrated on describing
prehistoric exchange and have paid comparatively little atten-
tion to the concomitant aspects of production. To redress this
unevenness, she approaches specialization in ceramic produc-
tion on two levels: first, she outlines the place of ceramic spe-
cialization in cultural evolution, and, second, she delineates
analytical methods for identifying specialization in ceramic
production. The analytical methods are a major contribution.
The evolutionary model is well conceived and effectively elab-
orated, but I would like to discuss briefly how it may be
limited.
Rice takes essentially a substantivist perspective and seeks
to understand specialization from its relationship to broader
sociopolitical and environmental contexts, especially as they
govern access to necessary resources. The development of
craft specialization with "ranking" (Step 3) is, therefore, seen
as resulting from elites' manipulating production of prestige
wares used in political and long-distance exchanges. The de-
velopment of specialization in utilitarian wares is seen as a
response to a state demand for surplus production (Step 4).
These relationships seem appropriate for helping explain the
presence of attached specialists producing for elites and the
governmental institutions that they control (see Trigger 1974:
100).
How, on the other hand, can we explain the presence of
independent specialists producing for an unspecified market
often consisting largely of nonelites? A modified formalist per-
spective derived from central-place theory ( cf. Haggett 1965:
114-35) seems appropriate. A specialized producer requires a
certain aggregate population that has access to his products.
In other words, the economic viability of an individual spe-
cialist depends on access to a threshold market population, and
the number of specialists should reflect the size of the market
population using the goods produced. The size of this market
population reflects ( 1) population density and ( 2) the range of
a good (potential distance between producer and consumer).
Increasing specialization would, from this perspective, be
caused by increasing population density, especially as asso-
ciated with urbanization, or by increasing market area resulting
from the expanded spatial integration of complex chiefdoms
and states that guarantee regional peace and permit broader
access.
Production can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs.
Inputs are the resources and labor; outputs are the goods pro-
duced. The form of production will be affected both by access
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
to resources, as Rice makes clear, and by access to markets.
It is the tie between exchange ( access to markets) and pro-
duction that I wish to emphasize here. Studies of production
must consider its integration with exchange and vice versa.
Production and exchange as the two key components of an
economy should be studied as an integrated system.
by ROBERT E. FRY
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue Uni-
versity, West Lafayette, Ind. 47907, U.S.A. 18 XI 80
Rice's article is an important and timely contribution to our
burgeoning stock of useful hypotheses on the origins of craft
specialization. Previous studies on ceramic specialization have
concentrated on the pressures, constraints, and adaptive conse-
quences of specialization, especially among modern producers.
The proposed model is a very general one and can be linked
with other theories explaining the causes of social and eco-
nomic differentiation. Rice also provides archaeologically use-
ful measures with which to assess the degree of specialization.
These complement the measures provided by van der Leeuw
(1976), who concentrated on production technology; Rice
examines variability in attributes, stylistic and technological,
that are often more accessible to the archaeologist. Instead of
simply developing a plausible model, she examines its utility
using published archaeological data. Since much of my re-
search has focused on the causes of variability in ceramic
attributes at a site and regional level (Fry 1979, 1980), I will
primarily comment on the usefulness of the model and the
adequacy of the measures of variability.
While the model is plausible and may well prove correct in
some regions, it is also highly linear and depends on certain
assumptions that limit its generalizability. For example, Rice
assumes a basically egalitarian economy and a strictly house-
hold level of production as a baseline. In some societies there
may have already been some degree of economic specialization
and redistributive exchange before the development of a pot-
tery "industry." More crucially, Rice places great emphasis
on resource control as a spur to the development of craft spe-
cialization. Certainly, the speed of the development of special-
ized craft production and perhaps even the type of specializa-
tion will also be influenced by the relative scarcity or abun-
dance of raw material and the perceived importance of pottery
in the local and regional economy. For example, the evolution
of specialization in pottery production may have been differ-
ent in the Guatemalan highlands, with their geographically
dispersed and scanty clay sources (Arnold 1978a, McBryde
1947), than in much of the southern Yucatec lowlands, where
pottery-making materials are abundant and widely distributed,
if not all of the highest quality (Fry 1980). On the other
hand, the linking of increasing variety with the emergence of
ranked and stratified societies appears to be well supported
globally. The highest degree of specialization and concentra-
tion of production may well have resulted from direct regu-
lation or manipulation of the economy by a managerial elite
by such means as tribute exaction and licensing and sponsoring
activities (Feinman 1980). However, such specialization may
also have derived from the development of a strong and pre-
dictable economic system with little direct intervention by the
elite. Here again, the question of access to resources may be
critical, possibly even more so than at earlier stages.
Rice's distribution-curve approach to ceramic variability has
much intuitive appeal, especially if great care is exercised in
choosing one's measures of specialization and differentiation.
Multiple classification using technological and paste character-
istics (Rice 1976b), shape characteristics, and stylistic charac-
teristics should allow for tighter control of extraneous sources
of variability. As Rice demonstrates, distributional studies can
be used to assist in choosing among several likely explanations,
Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981
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Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
such as the presence of one highly variable production tradi-
tion as opposed to several more structured traditions. The util-
ity of distributional analysis of patterns derived from the
study of artifacts underscores the necessity for a regional
approach to the understanding of pottery production, as
Shepard's ( 1942) work has for so long indicated.
The application of the model to the Barton Ramie data is
a useful exercise, even though the data do not permit a really
adequate test. The type-variety system as applied to the
Barton Ramie material tends to collapse variability except
along very narrow lines, primarily surface treatment and deco-
ration. In spite of the limitations of the data, much of the
model seems to be supported. I only wish the important Floral
Park ·complex had been included. Even though this complex
may show outside influence, it comes at a critical juncture in
the evolution of Lowland Maya society and gives evidence of
increasing social and economic differentiation, if not the ap-
pearance of a fully stratified society. The occurrence of many
new wares and shape classes and the increasing elaboration of
the ceramics are confirmation ~f a key point of the model.
The lesson for ceramicists in Rice's article is that we must
be increasingly sensitive to the structure of the variability in
our data and continually searching for systematic ways to
record and discern the patterning in this variability. The mea-
sures developed in this article are a significant advance and
should be tried out on a number of data sets from differing
socioeconomic settings.
by IAN HODDER
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge,
Downing St., Cambridge CB2 JDZ, England. 10 x 80
My comments will be restricted to the assumptions made by
Rice in the development of her interesting model.
How does one recognise specialisation in pottery production
when no evidence is available concerning sizes of work groups,
production centres, status of craftsmen, and so on? Rice sug-
gests a relationship between specialisation in pottery produc-
tion and standardisation in various characteristics of the pots
themselves, and she cites Balfet's ethnographic work as a sup-
port. My own ethnographic work in Kenya, Sudan, and Zam-
bia, however, has indicated that there is no necessary link
between pottery standardisation and specialisation in produc-
tion. Why is it that sometimes pottery standardisation equals
pottery specialisation and sometimes it does not?
Rice has set up a behavioural and evolutionary model
couched within functional ecology, as her analogies to eco-
logical terms emphasise. Standardisation is seen as a behav-
ioural response to, or reflection of, specialisation. Craft spe-
cialisation is itself a functional adaptation to ecological forces;
it reflects in part restricted or regulated access to resources
and is associated with more complex societies. What is dan-
gerous about this model and most similar applications of
functional and behavioural generalisations in archaeology ( e.g.,
the recent work on refuse [Schiffer, Binford] and burial
[Tainter, Saxe]) is that the hypotheses deny any contribution
from the particular cultural context; they are precisely "cross-
cultural." It is impossible to set up direct, cross-cultural be-
havioural links between pottery form, specialisation of pro-
duction, and societal organisation, since the nature of these
links ·in each cultural context depends on the way pottery is
viewed and incorporated into daily activities. There is no nec-
essary link between pottery standardisation and specialisation
in production because, within particular cultural frameworks,
there may be a demand for varied and unstandardised forms.
Diversity or richness in pottery assemblages may not indicate
differential or preferential access to goods. In many societies
231
pots are involved in the preparation of food, eating, and
drinking. In some societies there is a great emphasis on ritual,
classification, and categorisation in connection with cooking
and eating and a concern with the oppositions raw/cooked and
inside/outside the body. In such societies, which need not
be high on any scale of social complexity, the range and diver-
sity of pottery forms associated with preparing and eating food
may be high. Conversely, in certain highly complex stratified
societies, pottery and food preparation may not be given such
a symbolic significance. Thus, any cross-cultural generalisations
concerning pottery forms and production must not be behav-
ioural or functional, but must also consider frameworks of
cultural and symbolic meaning.
Some further examples make the same point. Rice suggests
a predictive behavioural link between the formation of elites
and the control or intensification of pottery production. In the
tribal kingdom of the Lozi in western Zambia, the elite does
control and encourage the production of certain material items
(e.g., iron), but it does not control pottery production, which
is carried out in village households, nor is pottery involved in
tribute payment. Finally, Rice suggests that economic special-
isation is a generally accepted concomitant of social complex-
ity. Two neighbouring tribes of the Nuba (the Moro and
Mesakin) are not identifiably different in social complexity.
Yet the Moro produce pottery in specialist work areas while
the Mesakin produce pottery in the individual hut compounds
(and the variety and standardisation of the ceramic products
of the two tribes do not differ). To the Moro, all activities,
such as pottery production, which are considered potentially
"polluting" are kept separate, hence the specialist production
area. For the Mesakin, on the other hand, polluting activities
can be carried on within households but are surrounded by
ritual. The organisation of pottery production does not simply
relate behaviourally to other aspects of social systems; con-
cepts within cultural contexts also play a role.
The dichotomy set up by Rice between craft specialisation
as an adaptive process and as a static structural trait is false.
Assessment of the structure within which pottery production
takes place is essential for both the identification and expla-
nation of craft specialisation. But that structure is dynamic,
a set of beliefs and concepts forming and formed by social and
ecological actions. Rice's interesting work must be examined
positively and extended to include more than the behavioural
and functional.
by L. R. V. JoEsINK-MANDEVILLE
Department of Anthropology, California State University,
Fullerton, Calif. 92634, U.S.A. 24 XI 80
I find this paper stimulating and thought-provoking and be-
lieve that application of Rice's trial model to ceramic se-
quences both elsewhere in Mesoamerica and in other parts of
the world might yield very interesting results. This type of
research would seem to reflect a certain maturing in Lowland
Maya archaeology. Once numerous regional ceramic sequences
have been established at type-sites and these sequences firmly
correlated with each other through the more traditional meth-
ods of ceramic analysis (e.g., McCown 1942, Perkins 1949,
and Lowe 1978), investigators will increasingly turn to ceramic
technometrics and the formulation of trial models such as this
one to help explain certain sociocultural phenomena. The alter-
native is to move on to virgin areas.
To insure success in testing this trial model, however, anal-
yses should be conducted by the same investigator or at least
by a group of colleagues employing mutually agreed-upon cri-
teria for data selection. In Lowland Maya archaeology, a good
deal of confusion has often arisen from the employment of
type-variety nomenclature, which may seem systematic but in
usage tends to be anything but Linnaean and can actually ob-
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scure genuine relationships (J oesink-Mandeville 197 5). Split-
ting has occurred where investigators have failed to recognize
the same pottery at different sites and have unwittingly as-
signed new ware, group, or type names. Lumping of different
ceramics has been equally confusing. Smith (1979), in his
recent critique of type-variety systematics, relates that he was
effectively barred from reanalyzing the Barton Ramie For-
mative data (Gifford 1976) by the method of presentation in-
herent in the system.
This trial model is based on the old premise, advocated by
Morgan, Childe, White, and others but not shared by some
present-day anthropologists, that the growth of culture is both
evolutionary and unilinear in nature, paralleling biological evo-
lution in that organisms evolve from simple to complex and
more specialized forms. In light of what we know about the
neighboring Olmec, do we really believe that Lowland Maya
Middle Formative culture was that simple? The incorporation
into the model from ecological studies of the descriptive con-
cept of diversity-with its principal-component concepts of
richness and evenness-follows in this vein, lending it an ele-
ment of environmental determinism. Rice could also have in-
voked the Sapir ( 1916) hypothesis from linguistics as a pos-
sible cultural analogy, as well as Forde's ( 1934) view of the
role of culture as the intervening factor between individuals
( and their social group) and the environment.
Also arguable is Rice's correlation of developmental stages
in ceramic technology with stages of sociopolitical evolution.
Such a correlation might prove valid in some test cases but
not in others because of the variable rate of development of
the different aspects of culture, or cultural subsystems, in dif-
ferent cultures. In the Olmec heartland, where the ceramics
were relatively simple in comparison with achievements in
other areas of the culture, what would the ceramic richness and
evenness curves indicate through time using, for example, the
San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and Cerro de las Mesas
data? And how would the peaks of these curves correspond
with the phases of Olmec sociopolitical organization, stone
sculpture, lapidary art, astronomy, and other intellectual en-
deavours? Similarly, ancient Luristan in the Middle East is
noted for its bronze work but little else, and in Mesopotamia
we can see how the ceramic complexes of the Ubaid-Uruk-
Jamdet Nasr sequence suffered because of the growing use of
metal and stone in the manufacture of wares for elite con-
sumption.
Finally, with respect to the proposed steps in Rice's model,
possibly the only Mesoamerican ceramic complexes that would
correspond to her Step 1 would be Yarumela 1, Pavon, Pox,
and Purron, all noted for their crudeness and, in the case of
Yarumela 1, for the randomness of rim form. It is unfortunate
that Rice does not correlate her steps in ceramic production
with the Barton Ramie ceramic complexes.
by CHARLES C. KOLB
Department of Anthropology, The Behrend College of The
Pennsylvania State University, Erie, Pa. 16563, U.S.A. 19
XI 80
Rice addresses a major shortcoming of anthropological ar-
chaeology: modelling the evolution of ceramic production. My
remarks will be confined primarily to her general theoretical
considerations and her trial model.
In a way this paper reflects the "state of the art" and
pointedly illustrates the problems of the interface between
ethnohistory, ethnology, and sociocultural model-building, on
one hand, and archaeological perspectives of provenience, chro-
nology, and the use of diachronic cultural anthropological
models, on the other. This interface is a "grey zone" in which
cultural anthropologists dabble in ceramic analyses while ar-
chaeologists attempt to use ( and sometimes misuse) ethno-
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
 graphic data. The third side to this interface triangle is that
of the physicochemical ceramic specialists, who deduce pro-
venience and chronology and then dabble in socioeconomic
model-building (again, sometimes misusing the anthropologi-
cal perspective). These "camps" of archaeologists and physico-
chemical specialists were distinct at the recent National Bu-
reau of Standards-Smithsonian Institution Seminar on Ceram-
ics as Archeological Material (Rice 1981, Kolb 1981).
Can one be a "jack-of-all-trades"-cultural anthropological
theoretician/ethnologist, ceramics archaeologist, and physico-
chemical specialist? I believe so, but to complete the phrase
"master of none" may also be applicable. Rice, trained in the
Matson ( 1965a) philosophy of ceramic studies, has moved
from archaeological and physicochemical investigations toward
theoretical constructs in the Matson tradition that "unless
ceramic studies lead to a better understanding of the cultural
context in which the objects were made and used, they form
a sterile record of limited worth" (Matson 1965b:202). There
have been recent critiques of the archaeological/physicochemi-
cal interface (Rice 1978b, 1981; Kolb 1981), but fewer exam-
inations of the third interface have been published. Adams's
( 1979) paper on ceramics and history is an exception, and
Rice's is another. The primary problem of this triangular inter-
face is communication-a problem Rice seeks to resolve. She
has proposed a pioneering model that is as potentially attack-
able as the evolutionary band-tribe-chiefdom-state model
(Steward 1955) elaborated by Service (1971a, b, 1975, 1979),
Sahlins (1968), Sahlins and Service (1960), and Fried (1967).
She has elucidated a relatively simple, logically straightfor-
ward, linear trial model for the evolution of pottery produc-
tion based on the sociocultural/sociopolitical/socioeconomic
linear model of societal complexity ( egalitarian-ranked-strati-
fied) documented by our colleagues in ethnology.
This model allows for some cultural dynamic processes but
does not sufficiently address devolution, substitution, and syn-
cretism, as, for example, Charlton ( 1968, 1976, 1979; Charlton
and Katz 1979) has done for Aztec and other Mesoamerican
ceramics. A cogent illustration of syncretism is that European
motifs ( coats of arms, Austrian eagles, etc.) appear on tra-
ditional Aztec IV pottery well into the early 17th century.
Similarly, I have argued (Kolb 1977b) that stimulus diffusion,
substitution, and syncretism can be observed in connection
with a Central Asian ceramic from northern Afghanistan. One
should also be aware that mental templates alter through time
for humanistic, philosophical, and religious reasons as well as
because of changes in consumer demand in a market economy.
The decline in the quality of American consumer goods noted
by Tuchman (1980) provides some food for thought from a
historian's viewpoint. Ceramic experimentation and the vari-
ations in the replication of mass-produced non-wheel-made
pottery should also be noted (Hodges 196 5). The questions
of full-time vs. part-time specialists, centralized vs. decentral-
ized control, etc., are noted by Rice in her summation, but
data to illuminate these problems are currently impossible to
obtain.
Since Rice's model is applied only to the 600 B.C.-A.D. 750
stratified society at the Barton Ramie site, we have here only
a segment of the trial model. I understand why she has not
included the periods after A.D. 750, but what might be the re-
sults of including the complete Late Classic and Postclassic
or the colonial and "peasant" ethnographic periods repre-
sented in nearby sites or regions? Some data from Reina and
Hill (1978) and Arnold (1971, 1975a, b, 1978b) might be em-
ployed to extend the continuum. The model could be tested
against data from other Mesoamerican sites, such as Tzin-
tzuntzan (Foster 1965, 1967a, b) or Teotihuacan. Acculturative
influences obviously alter the data at Barton Ramie subse-
quent to A.D. 750, but is any similar site or stratified society
without such influence? We appear to have an ideal case at
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Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
Barton Ramie. Then, what of the pre-600 B.C. periods, when,
according to the model, there would have been undifferentiated
( Step 1), egalitarian ( Step 2), and ranked ( Step 3) societal
precursors either at the site or at nearby ones?
Rice presents a valuable lineal four-step model but tests
only a part of Step 3 and, in the main, Step 4. The ultimate
test will be for archaeologists to apply the model to their own
ceramic data, especially in those cases in which the archaeo-
logical cultures or societies may be defined as undifferentiated,
egalitarian, or ranked. My own ceramic data from Classic
Teotihuacan (Kolb 1973, 1977a, 1979), a stratified society
( Step 4 of the model), would conform to the five implica-
tions: identifiable locations of ceramic manufacture, mass pro-
duction, broad distribution of standardized forms, standard-
ized pastes in nonelite ceramics, and elaborations of decorative
characteristics in elite ceramics. Indeed, ceramic specialization
is an adaptive process.
Rice refers to Millon's (1970) estimate that 25-35% of the
populace at the urban center of Teotihuacan were involved in
craft specialization, but this may be a maximal figure for full-
time specialists (Kolb 1979:225-37). Over 700 craft work-
shops have now been identified, including primarily obsidian
tool manufacturing locales, but also about two dozen pottery
workshops. Barbour (1976) has identified over two dozen
ceramic figurine workshops with undeniable specializations.
To examine the entire four-step model at a single site or
for a single society may be beyond our present capabilities.
Perhaps we must resort to the intensive examination of spe-
cific elite ceramics of known chronology and "known" pro-
venience, such as Plumbate (Shepard 1948, Diehl, Lomas, and
Wynn 1974, Bruhns 1980), Maya Fine Paste (Rands et al.
1975), White Ware (Rice 1976a), and Thin Orange (Kolb
1973), rather than the entire ceramic spectrum including utili-
tarian wares.
I wonder how the differential plotting of pottery groups af-
fects the conclusions. Black pottery is plotted for 600 B.C.-A.D.
750 in figure 4, for B.C./A.D.-A.D. 750 in figure 5, for 600 B.C.-
A.D. 750 in figure 6, and for 100 B.C.-A.D. 750 in figure 7.
Polychrome is always plotted for A.D. 450-7 50 and red for 600
B.C.-A.D. 750. I suspect that the 225-sherd sample limitation
relates to the black plottings, but this is not stated. In addi-
tion, why a 225 limit rather than, say 200 or 250?
Finally, Rice initially poses nine questions. Only Question 7
is addressed in the paper. I hope that in her reply she will
consider some of the others.
by MASAE NISHIMURA and YASUSHI KoJo
School of Education, Waseda University, 6-1, Nishiwaseda
1-chome, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160, Japan. 18 XI 80
While the relationship between economic specialization and
social complexity has frequently been dealt with in archaeo-
logical research, Rice's article can be considered original in
that the proposed model deals in detail with specialized pottery
production and includes various independently testable impli-
cations. If the implications enumerated at each step can be
accepted as general diagnostics of an evolutionary trend toward
specialized pottery production, variability in ceramics might
become another useful index of the complexity of the society
in which the pottery is made and used. Whether the model is
valid or invalid, however, in either general or specific terms,
is left unresolved. It is not tested, but simply applied to a par-
ticular set of archaeological observations. To test it one would
need independent empirical data on social complexity in each
time phase, functional variation, and methods of production
of each ceramic category. The applicability of the model to
Japan's pre- and protohistory, which has a long pottery tra-
233
dition and different levels of political complexity probably
ranging from the egalitarian stage to nascent statehood, is in-
determinate because the study of social complexity in each
time period is insufficient, solid investigation of pottery pro-
duction by period is undeveloped, and ceramic analysis from
the viewpoint of this article is completely lacking.
by MIGUEL RIVERA DORADO
Departamento de Antropologia de America, Universidad
Complutense, Ciudad Universitaria, M adrid-3, Spain. 2 5 x
80
Rice's article is a step forward on the dark road of archaeo-
logical methodology. Precisely because of that darkness, the
progress of investigators is often faltering, circular, or on
shaky ground. The theme is important, strongly sociological in
flavor-at some points it does not go beyond Durkheim-and
recently fashionable in Mayan studies ( e.g., Adams 1970,
Becker 1973, Haviland 1974): how we can infer from the
archaeological record the presence or absence of specialized
occupations in an ancient society and, more specifically, how
we can solve this problem on the basis of ceramics.
Rice constructs a four-step model and derives various im-
plications from each step. As she explicitly recognizes, in it
she assumes a kind of unilineal evolution in accord with an
elementary scheme: from simple to complex. What is involved
is a dialectical play between the expected variability of ce-
ramic assemblages as the society evolves toward more com-
plex forms and the growing standardization that is supposedly
a result of mass production in factories and the economic and
symbolic regulation of that production. Personally, I think it
unquestionable not only that the social division of labor ( thus
possible specialization in pottery manufacture) proceeds paral-
lel to the self-identification as differentiated sectors of ranks,
castes, and classes, but also that ancient civilizations had a
permanent opposition between popular and elite subcultures
and that only in the latter does one find an index of variability
when one is investigating the material expression of and the
reasons for social differentiation. This means (a) that Mayan
peasant communities reproduce during the Classic the same
pattern of internal organization of domestic production and
self-sufficiency that we know for the Formative, even though
the production of surplus has increased and part of it leaves
the community or certain exotic goods, such as obsidian, are
incorporated into the toolkit; ( b) that the selection of ma-
terials to which to apply the model Rice proposes should be
preceded by the identification on archaeological sites of "social
occupation areas" on the basis of which to choose an indepen-
dent sample-the variability curves will differ radically de-
pending on whether the sherds have been obtained primarily
from a ceremonial center, in residences of the elite, or from
dwelling units dispersed over the countryside; and ( c) that
one must justify in each operation the relevance of the ceramic
attributes employed, avoiding the ambiguity of terms such as
"temper" and the polysemic character of others such as "deco-
ration."
Some additional observations will complete this comment:
1. Two kinds of ceramic manufacture must be distinguished.
Manufacture for one's own consumption reflects microtradi-
tions, manufacture by specialists macrotraditions. The former
is conditioned in its expansion and development by the type of
social organization, the level of intercommunication, and other
factors that affect the domestic sphere. The latter is condi-
tioned by the ideology of the ruling minority and its economic
and political interests; that is, it expresses the higher levels of
integration in ranked or stratified societies.
2. The implications of a no-specialization situation in egali-
tarian or acephalous groups are more flexible than Rice sug-
gests. For example, on the first: there may be great uniformity
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in technological characteristics if households share a clay
source, if the characteristics of containers are determined by
their utilitarian functions, if techniques follow old, deeply
rooted, and widely shared traditions. In other words, precisely
on the technological level, on which cultural responses are
always most "economical" (seeking the best results with the
least effort), the tendency to imitate the procedures of those
who have achieved those optimal solutions is very strong, and
there is neither reason nor stimulus for variation; on the con-
trary, the tendency is to perpetuate the formulas that the col-
lectivity considers correct. On the second: in egalitarian so-
cieties the skills of men and women in tasks in which they
have been trained from infancy are almost identical, and the
same can be said of the time devoted to the manufacture or
repair of furniture and household utensils. On the fourth:
similar features may be distributed throughout the site in
accordance with the situation I have described in connection
with Implication 1.
3. Rice considers craft specialization an adaptive process
by which variety in behavior and its material expression is
regulated or regularized. She also writes that specialization
represents a situation in which access to certain kinds of re-
sources is restricted to particular social segments. It is obvious
that if we define stratification in terms of differential access
to resources, what Rice shows is the correlation between di-
vision of labor and social differentiation, which rather than
being a hypothesis is a fact amply proven by archaeology and
ethnography. However, I am inclined to link this phenomenon
with the need of emerging elites to symbolize their status, so
that a sequential order is established between stratification and
specialization-the reason for the latter being found not im-
mediately in the realm of economics but in that of the ex-
pression of the new order produced by social changes. It can
also be proposed with every justification, however, as Havi-
land (1975:23) does, that religion, perhaps as an autonomous
subsystem, played a fundamental role in the origin of special-
ization. It is a question of perspectives.
by BARBARA L. STARK
Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University,
Tempe, Ariz. 85281, U.S.A. 1 XI 80
A problem acknowledged by Rice is the use of a unilineal
model. Although a stage progression in social complexity is
a convenient device for discussing broad changes in the pro-
duction and distribution of goods, the reasons posited by Rice
for changes in production seem unnecessarily unilineal. For
example, in Step 2 economic differences promote specializa-
tion; in Step 3 predominantly social factors are at work
through elite demand for prestige products. I suggest that
more complexity in the causes of specialization is both possible
and likely. In some situations, particularly depending on en-
vironmental conditions, economic differentiation may precede
social ranking and contribute to it. However, the Hawaii case
and Moundville suggest the reverse-that specialization de-
veloped because of elite demand for status goods and because
elites subsidized craftsmen (Earle 1978: 143-62; Peebles and
Kus 1977). Flannery's (1968:107) suggestion that in Oaxaca
exchange of status commodities among early farming commu-
nities may have facilitated the "evening out" of setbacks in
farming in different localities implies a demand for exotic or
status goods (produced by semispecialists in some cases) be-
cause of ecological conditions which do not themselves directly
promote specialization but make social hierarchies useful.
Certainly there are other factors we will have to examine
as well. My point is that sorting out the reasons for special-
ization is a sensitive research question. Aside from my con-
cern about the unilineal emphasis of the model, I consider it
important to place pottery production in a wider social matrix.
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
 Rather than expecting simple correlations between production
and broad social categories (stages), I think we must consider
the interrelations of sets of variables, including transport, the
exchange system, the effective population of consumers, and
the social incentives for and risks of specialization.
A second topic of interest to me is the methodology of the
study of specialization. There is not space to address the gen-
eral issue, and I only offer a few observations about the case
study:
1. Rice attempts to dissect a type-variety classification in
such a manner that ceramic diversity can be measured. The
indices of diversity are based on the assumption that the en-
tities observed are independent. In figures 2 and 3, which com-
pare richness and evenness in slipped and unslipped pottery,
it is not clear what entities entered into the calculations.
Table 2 gives numbers of varieties, types, groups, and wares;
the higher-order units comprise the lower-order ones, which
means they are not independent. If her diversity measures
were calculated from only one kind of unit there is no diffi-
culty, but if the measures are based on several they are mis-
leading.
2. Rice's graphs of relative incidences of formal, decorative,
and technological attributes through time draw on attribute
records imbedded in the type-variety descriptions for Barton
Ramie. A constant dilemma with the type-variety system is
the degree to which attribute data are recorded systematically.
Rice is forced to use a level of distinction for which the type-
variety classification is not designed, since it builds on asso-
ciations of attributes. For her purposes, a consistent attribute-
level classification makes more sense.
3. Rice does not use standard time intervals in assessing
change in Barton Ramie pottery, although she does standard-
ize the comparisons in terms of the amount of pottery. But if
change in pottery accumulates through time, then pottery de-
rived from a longer interval may appear more diverse than
that derived from a shorter period, given equal sample sizes,
simply because there has been greater opportunity, chrono-
logically, for change to occur. Of course, in reality rates of
change may be quite variable, but we cannot assess this until
standardized time intervals are available.
4. Given our current ignorance of how to interpret vari-
ability in pottery, a model like Rice's should be tested not
simply against diversity measures, but also against indepen-
dent sources of information about changes in social organiza-
tion, etc. Without independent corroborating evidence of the
social contexts and distribution of pottery, many aspects of
Rice's model remain untested. For example, the pottery record
at Barton Ramie may be unrepresentative of changes over
a larger area. Some of the pottery could be local and some
imported, and it may be the site's position in regional distri-
bution systems rather than the general organization of pro-
duction that has altered.
Of particular value in Rice's case study is the vision of the
general ceramic inventory from a site as a reflection of chang-
ing degrees of specialization. The attempted test of the model
helps show the new directions that analysis must take to re-
lease pottery from the predominantly temporal and cultural
tasks to which it has been confined in archaeological studies.
by SANDER E. VAN DER LEEUW
Institute for Pre- and Protohistory, University of Amster-
dam, Sin gel 453, Amsterdam, The Nether lands. 17 XI 80
Rice's paper would seem to belong among the most important
contributions to ceramic studies in recent years. She has dem-
onstrated very clearly and soundly, and very effectively, that
ceramic studies may be used in assessing vastly more complex
problems. Moreover, she has led the way in an approach which
will, in the long run, certainly be profitable to those of us who
Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981
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Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
study other kinds of artefacts. The following remarks are thus
no more than a sign that I have been highly stimulated by her
contribution. I would like to focus some attention on why her
approach works and in passing point to some of the under-
lying assumptions.
First and foremost among these is the assumption that
human activity is the processing of matter, energy, and infor-
mation. From it, one may derive the statement that the way
in which matter and energy are processed is dependent upon
information processing. This dependency would seem to be
at once quantitative and qualitative: (a) the amounts of each
which may be processed in a certain period of time are re-
lated, and ( b) the amount of information processed is related
to the organization of the system which processes it and thus
to the qualitative aspects of the organization of energy and
matter.
The next assumption is that there is a natural limit to the
number of bits of information which may be handled per unit
of time per unit of energy/matter. It leads to the conclusion
that growth of information flows beyond a certain point neces-
sarily leads to changes not only in the nature of the channels,
but also in the meaning of each bit of information, simply
because there is no other way out. As each bit of information
is accorded, as it were, more organizational efficiency, growing
amounts of energy and matter may be processed per bit, so
that the total flow of meaning/form grows while the maximum
number of bits to be processed per unit time is not exceeded.
Growth therefore leads to changes in symboling efficiency,
changes in context, and thus changes in meaning ( or, to use
a technical term, changes in the level of redundancy and the
nature of the redundancy system).
The higher level of redundancy reached as "complexity"
grows can only be retained by the system, we must assume,
when it processes enough pertinent information in the correct
form (i.e., when symbol and context are activated often
enough to be remembered). Thus, the information flow must
be kept at the higher level once that level has been reached.
This can only be achieved by permanently processing the
amount of energy and matter involved. As a consequence,
changes inaugurated in times of higher flow levels tend to re-
main at the higher level.
The "organizational efficiency" of a symbol or a channel is
constrained by (a) the number of cases to which it applies and
( b) the degree to which it applies to those cases alone without
ambiguity. "Table" applies to tables alone, "furniture" to
tables and chairs and cabinets, etc. Similarly, a telephone num-
ber is efficient because it applies to all telephone calls made to
someone and because it reaches that someone and nobody else.
In the case of organizational channels, repetition of an activity
a large number of times usually leads to performance of it
with greater precision in a shorter time. In general, therefore,
"growing complexity" will entail differentiation of channels
( each spending a higher proportion of its time on the pro-
cessing of one and the same kind of information), reduction
of conceptual fuzziness, and raising of the level of abstract-
ness and applicability to more cases. All these are aspects of
"specialization." To translate back into pottery terms: spe-
cialization consists of making more pots, more different kinds
of pots, and more highly standardized pots. Standardization
and elaboration are, as Rice observes, two sides of the same
coin, which she proceeds to measure.
Thus placing specialization and the "growth of complexity"
in a single wider perspective raises some interesting problems
of a more general nature. First, if we must conclude that
growth of complexity entails reduction of conceptual fuzziness,
should we then not equally .conclude that, in the study of so-
cieties with different degrees of complexity, we must determine
235
that degree of fuzziness before we may even begin to ask
questions about the functioning of that society? If we don't,
we are looking, as it were, through a microscope at an un-
known object without knowing with what magnification to
look or what to look for: we will not see anything that makes
sense. If we want to reconstruct the functioning of a society
as nearly as possible, we must not only ask questions, but ask
them with the same degree of fuzziness as they were conceived
by the participants in that society. Thus, we must know the
degree of fuzziness first. Hence the need for Rice's approach.
The question "why growth in complexity?" or "why ever
more information processing?" has so far usually been an-
swered by pointing to one or more of a number of specific
"causes," such as warfare, population growth, irrigation, etc.
Recently, we have become dissatisfied with these "explana-
tions." Maybe tpey could be subsumed by the concept of
interaction. Growth of the volume of information processed
necessarily entails growth in the volume of interaction. This
volume may be changed by population growth, by growth of
aggregation even independent of population growth, by changes
in the degree of interaction between a group and its neigh-
bours, by technological development, by increased mutual de-
pendency (among other things as a result of specialization),
etc. Mayhew (1974; Mayhew and Levinger 1976) has argued
the relationship between the amount of interaction and such
diverse phenomena as social stratification, the relative amount
of power of an oligarchy, time per interaction (and thus effi-
ciency of interactions), etc. A model based on this line of
reasoning seems to hold promise as a tool for tackling a variety
of archaeological problems (van der Leeuw n.d.).
Reply
by PRUDENCE M. RICE
Gainesville, Fla., U.S.A. 5 r 81
If the comments on my article are any indication, there are
clearly a lot of people out there who are interested in pottery
production, but there is no consensus on how to study it. My
initial efforts to fill the void have met with reactions that are
mixed, to say the least. The criticisms of the model and its
"test" were to a certain extent predictable and in some cases
merely call attention to deficiencies I acknowledged myself
(the model is undesirably unilineal, and the Barton Ramie
ceramic report was not an ideal test case). The exercise was
offered to stimulate discussion and further testing--either of
the propositions advanced in the model or of alternatives.
I would like to thank all the respondents for their com-
ments. The favorable reactions are very much appreciated, as
are the perceptive observations on the limitations or inade-
quacies of the model. Several of the commentators raise legiti-
mate questions about what I did and how I did it, while others
are more concerned with what I didn't do and why not. Many
of these points reflect differing philosophical and/or theoretical
views of pottery production in particular and archaeology in
general. Further discussion of some of these issues, plus a
brief look at what I consider to be a somewhat disturbing
matter lurking behind all this, is warranted.
Of particular interest to me is the relationship between craft
specialization and social complexity. This may be phrased in
several different ways to emphasize different aspects of the
issue. On the one hand is the question whether or not in-
creasing cultural complexity is marked by the concurrent es-
tablishment of craft specialists. Virtually everyone ( except
Davis, and perhaps Hodder) seems prepared to concede that
it is. Granting this, the question then becomes, what do the
craft specialists do? They produce, obviously, but what, and
for whom? Stark reminds us that the relationship between eco-
nomic differentiation and social ranking is a complex chicken-
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and-egg question and that it is dangerous to give clear pri-
macy to either. Earle calls attention to the important dis-
tinction between "attached specialists," who produce for an
elite, and "independent specialists," who produce for the gen-
eral consumer. Rivera Dorado describes the products of these
two groups in terms of "macrotradition" and "microtradition."
These latter observations are potential amplifications of the
model and its interpretation, calling to mind "folk/urban" and
"big-tradition/little-tradition" distinctions. Nevertheless, the
questions to which the paper and model are addressed are
these: if we acknowledge that in complex societies we are
likely to have craft specialists, how or why did they come
to fill that role, and how do we as archaeologists verify their
existence?
A related problem is the term "elite." What, or who, is an
elite? How may elites be defined archaeologically (i.e., ma-
terially)? Adams points out that in Egypt the same vessel
forms and styles are found both in royal tombs and in the
dwellings of peasants. This is true of Maya polychrome pot-
tery as well, and also of obsidian. "Elite"/"utilitarian" is not
a simple dichotomy, but a continuum-and the continuum is
multidimensional, at that. A good that functions as a special-
purpose or elite item in some contexts need not do so in all
contexts. This is why I issued the caveat that my use of the
term "elite" was a shorthand notation for a special-purpose,
status, or restricted good. In terms of the model, however,
what is more to the point is whether there are distinctions
other than form or style (i.e., other dimensions of variability)
that set off otherwise simple tomb pottery from that associated
with nonelite contexts: more care in painting, different re-
sources used, higher firing, different quantities, and so forth.
The concept of variability-its meaning and measurement-
seems to have bothered some of the respondents. Adams is
concerned with the geographical (site) boundaries within which
to measure meaningful variability, as is Stark. Joesink-Mande-
ville raises the related issue of how Olmec ceramic variability
might correspond to variability in sociopolitical organization,
sculpture, etc. Their questions bring out the very complex
nature of ceramic specialization as it may be identified spa-
tially or temporally. Adams's (1979) interesting article points
to the folly of assuming that ceramic change necessarily corre-
lates with sociopolitical change. Such changes do not neces-
sarily correlate, but sometimes, provocatively, they may. The
problem-as in the discussion above of whether "elite" pot-
tery can be distinguished from "peasant" pottery-is how
broadly or narrowly variability should be defined, what attri-
butes one chooses to observe or emphasize, what level of
similarity or dissimilarity is being discussed. For example,
at some levels it is difficult to see that whales and humans
have anything in common, yet at other levels they are related.
Thus there may or may not be a relationship between Olmec
ceramic variability and sculptural variability; such questions
warrant investigation.
A further demurrer on variability is that of Ball, who ob-
jects to my use of ecological concepts such as "richness" or
"evenness." I can understand, to a certain extent, his objec-
tion. It falls into a long line of amply justified criticisms of
the hit-or-miss application of borrowed models, techniques,
and measures to archaeological data: misuse of statistics,
quantitative geography, and so on. On the other hand, I am
a pragmatist: if a new technique or measure can tell us some-
thing new about our data, why reject it out of hand simply
because it is an ecological ( or geographical, or statistical)
concept? Rarely can models and theories from one discipline
be safely transferred to another in toto without some adjust-
ment, but such adjustments can be made through careful use
and experience. The use of diversity indices seems to be gain-
ing some popularity among archaeologists (Yellen 1977, Bro-
nitsky 1978, Conkey 1980, Gorman 1979, Toll 1980); continued
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
use will provide a basis for its evaluation with respect to ar-
chaeological problems.
Several commentators point out that craft production, and
particularly the interpretation of variability as an indicator of
production, must be understood within a broader social matrix
than the one I presented. Ball questions whether richness and
evenness can be interpreted as production specialization alone,
rather than as a function of availability and consumption (to
which production is obviously responsive). Earle brings up the
matter of access to markets and general considerations of ex-
change. Stark mentions additional social variables, such as
transport and incentives for specialization. Hodder observes
that specialization should be understood within its structural
context as well as its functional and ecological constraints,
and Kolb notes the role of underlying humanistic, philosophi-
cal, and religious concerns in shaping demand. Along more
ecological lines, Fry argues that the scarcity or abundance of
resources is as important as socially sanctioned access to the
resources. Rivera Dorado suggests that such access may be
linked to elites' seeking to symbolize their status, a point I
made earlier ( 1976a) in some of the work that led to develop-
ment of this model. All of these points are highly important,
and I certainly have no quarrel with any of them. My failure
to discuss these issues in the paper should not be construed
as either ignorance of them or denial of their significance; it
simply reflects a different theoretical starting point. Any uni-
dimensional "prime-mover" theory of the rise of craft special-
ization is likely to meet the same ultimate fate as prime-mover
theories of the origins of states, the development of agricul-
ture, or the "collapse" of the Maya, as van der Leeuw indi-
cates. Complex phenomena have complex causes, and what may
work in one area/culture/time will not necessarily work in all
others. Elaborations of the model presented here, which was
not claimed to be either universal or exclusive, will certainly
broaden explanations of craft specialization. Van der Leeuw
has pointed out a potential direction for a new or modified
model, stressing the power of information theory and study of
interaction.
A few particular questions about data and methods have
been raised, and I will try to answer these. Stark asks about
the units used in calculating richness and evenness in figures 2
and 3. As I have said, the calculations were done on the basis
of groups, that is, the number of sherds within each ceramic
group, summed for slipped groups and for unslipped groups
by time period. For example, if Ceramic Complex X has 5,000
sherds in slipped groups-1,500 in Group A, 2,000 in Group B,
750 in Group C, and 750 in Group D-the calculations, ac-
cording to the formula given, begin with 1,500/5 ,000 multi-
plied by the log of l,500/5,000; then 2,000/5,000 times the
log of'2,000/5,000; and so on for Groups C and D. Finally,
the resultant figures are summed to giv~ a figure for "rich-
ness" for slipped groups in Complex X. I am not entirely clear
what Stark means about the independence of units. Although
the units of the type-variety system are hierarchically arranged,
the particular units (groups) select!d for these calculations are
equivalent and thus independent because sherds of a red group
cannot be members of a black group, and a black group cannot
be an unslipped group, in the same way that a maple tree cannot
be an oak. How this is "misleading" I do not know. The prob-
lem of nonindependence of attributes did enter into the mea-
surement of variability of decorative, technological, and formal
categories, and this precluded the use of the diversity index for
these characters.
Stark also questions the validity of using nonstandardized
time periods for calculating variability. Her argument seems
to me not only to contradict itself, but to contradict the whole
rationale for archaeologists' relative dating procedures based
on ceramic change. Pottery change may or may not be cumu-
lative, depending on the kind of changes one is talking about
Vol. 22 • No. 3 • June 1981
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Rice: EVOLUTION OF SPECIALIST PRODUCTION
and the boundaries within which change is defined. Neverthe-
less, the fact that culture changes more rapidly and cumu-
latively (as opposed to substitutively) through time provides
the basis for successively narrower temporal divisions of the
history of a site or a region and of the prehistory of the human
species ( everyone is familiar with the exponential curves of
rate of technological change, for example). Since most archae-
ologists create these divisions, rightly or wrongly, on the basis
of some quantitative and qualitative change in the ceramic
record, the fact that the earlier periods are longer than the
later periods means that in absolute time (i.e., with standard-
ized time intervals) there would be greater variability at the
end of the sequence than at the beginning. Rates of change
are indeed variable, and change can be expected to vary in
different kinds of attributes ( technological, decorative, etc.;
see Adams's comments regarding style), but I do not see how
standard time intervals would improve our understanding.
On the other hand, we can look at figures 2 through 7 again
and see that the Late and Terminal Preclassic and Early and
Late Classic periods are all approximately equal in absolute
time. Ignoring Tiger Run as a separate period and mentally
"averaging" it with Spanish Lookout is one way (though not
the best way) of dealing with Stark's argument by giving us
more or less standard time periods. Another way is to look at
the Tiger Run complex itself. The early Late Classic appears
to be the most aberrant of the periods in diversity, with
marked jumps up or down relative to earlier and later periods.
The reason for this may be that it is significantly shorter than
the other periods. We may consider the directions of the
changes for the 20 data points of variability in the Tiger Run
complex on figures 2 through 7: according to Stark, pottery
of a shorter time period may be less diverse than that from
a longer period by virtue of the shortness of the time span
for change to accumulate. Of those 20 data points, 5 can be
seen to represent a significant decrease in variability, 4 repre-
sent a significant increase in variability (a pronounced peak),
and 11 represent little change in the overall trend of the line
from Early Classic (Hermitage) to late Late Classic (Spanish
Lookout). Of the 9 data points that show a significant de-
parture from the trend, 5 are from black groups and two are
polychromes. I have discussed some of the aberrations I feel
may be associated with black and polychrome pottery to help
explain some of these differences; another explanation may be
simply that black and polychrome groups are generally the
smallest groups in terms of absolute numbers of sherds.
Kolb makes some theoretically interesting if empirically im-
practical suggestions for extending the model and asks a few
questions about my presentation. I chose not to include the
Postclassic (I don't know what he is referring to as the "com-
plete Late Classic") because I feel that it represents a dis-
continuity in manufacturing tradition in the area. I realize
this point may be arguable, however. Colonial and "peasant"
ethnographic ceramic manufacture from nearby sites is, aside
from being part of the discontinuity I just mentioned, unknown
to me. I consider it unjustifiable to extend the continuum by
adding data from an entirely different culture area, such as the
Guatemalan highlands (see Fry's comment). Earlier (pre-600
B.c.) ceramic complexes have not been identified at Barton
Ramie, although the Swasey complex at Cuello, in northern
Belize (Hammond et al. 1979), is very early. But again, I do
not consider it appropriate to extend the model artificially with
data from another site.
Kolb also inquires about the differences in plots for black
pottery. The reason no line appears for Jenney Creek black
pottery in figures 5 and 7 is that the variability figures were
so high they were effectively off the graph. Polychromes were
plotted only for the Early and Late Classic because they do
237
not occur in earlier periods. The 225 limit rather than 200 or
250 is arbitrary, although to quibble about 25 sherds one way
or another seems silly. Of the 10 groups excluded by this pro-
cedure, 7 had fewer than 100 members and should be excluded
by any reckoning in a study in which 29 of the groups had
over 1,000 sherds.
As to the nine questions I posed in the introductory para-
graphs, Kolb claims I addressed only Question 7 and expresses
a wish that I would deal with the others. As he notes himself,
issues of full-time versus part-time specialization and central-
ized versus decentralized control of production (Questions 8
and 9) are really impossible to come to grips with at this
stage in our understanding of specialization. I do feel that my
discussion in the section headed "General Theoretical Con-
siderations" as well as the structure of the model itself ad-
dresses Questions 1, 2, 3, and, to a lesser extent, 4. More pre-
cise answers are obviously highly desirable but no doubt will
have to await further research and will vary with the theo-
retical orientation of the person attempting the answer. Ques-
tions 4, 5, and 6 are linked in part to the questions Fry raises
in his comments about resource quality and availability and
in part to individual site and regional histories. Probably the
best discussions of issues pertaining to resources and environ-
ment are those of Arnold (1975a) and Matson (1965c), with
which Kolb is already familiar.
Joesink-Mandeville asks that I correlate the "steps" in ce-
ramic production with the Barton Ramie ceramic complexes.
I had hoped that I made it clear that my "steps" were arti-
ficial demarcations of a continuum and not intended to be
correlated with individual complexes. Quite clearly, the Barton
Ramie sequence begins after the characteristics of production
that I subsumed under Step 1. If forced to make a decision,
I would say that the Jenney Creek complex probably repre-
sents something along the lines of Step 2 and Spanish Lookout
probably an early Step 4. However, I am very uncomfortable
with this sort of reification.
I am disappointed by the apparent confusion on the part of
several commentators over basics of scientific method. Yet
in looking over a random selection of comments on articles
presenting "models" in CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY I have found
this to be, surprisingly, a recurring problem. In my article,
I presented a model. A model (paraphrasing Clarke 1973 :2-4)
is a heuristic device that simplifies reality and offers a "par-
tially accurate predictive framework" within a given science.
Because models simplify reality, they do not address all as-
pects of variability in the real world, nor do they explain all
cases. Nor does a single contrary case invalidate a model. The
contribution of models is to provide insights into how things
work and inadequacies of data-collection strategies. The build-
ing, testing, and refining of models is the essence of a .scien-
tific discipline and is the procedure by which theory and data
collection may be linked. However, the salient point to re-
member about models is that because they are simplifications,
they are selective in the aspects of reality they treat. Thus
it is not only allowable but desirable to have more than one
model of different aspects of a single situation. There are, ob-
viously, better models and poorer models. Certain of a set of
competing models may be found to be "better," which is to
say more powerful, on the basis of their comprehensiveness,
predictiveness, efficiency, or accuracy, in a particular situation.
The evolutionary model in this paper was proposed as a
trial effort in terra incognita, where there is an acknowledged
dearth of competing formulations. It was developed within an
explicitly positivist, materialist, and ecological framework, or
"paradigm," hence its emphasis on observable, measurable,
technological variables rather than ideational ones such as
"meaning." This is not to say that "humanistic, philosophical,
or religious" concerns or "skills, interests, and needs" are not
important. Certainly they are, but they are somewhat "slip-
238
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pery" in terms of their archaeological visibility, measurement,
and validation. Nor do the theoretical stance and key variables
adopted in the formulation of this model necessarily preclude
the possibility of incorporating other theories, variables, and
viewpoints into modifications of it or the development of
another one.
The dualities that anthropologists so like to seek in a cul-
ture's symbolic structure exist-yea, verily-even in science
itself. Science has its particularizing modes and its generalizing
modes: at some stages and for some practitioners, empiricism
and raw-data collection are foremost; at others, the data are
generalized (shall we say cooked?), and theory-building and
testing are stressed. Somehow, though, selection of one mode
inevitably invites attack from practitioners of the other. Efforts
to synthesize generate criticism from those whose data don't
fit-witness the barrage of ethnoarchaeological "cautionary
tales" to which we have been subjected in the last 15 years-
while efforts at "mere" data collection and description bring
sniffs of disdain and cries of theoretical vacuity. It is, as
Rivera Dorado notes, a question of perspectives.
I will conclude by noting with pleasure that many of the
commentators cite their own work and their own interests as
appropriate for modification of the model or development of
alternatives. It is gratifying to me that these scholars have
already been stimulated to go beyond my trial formulation in
order to polish it into something that more closely approaches
reality. I await their future efforts in this regard with eager
anticipation. There is a lot of work to be done.
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