image/svg+xml
281
XII/2/2021
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
Daniela Castellanos
1*
1
Departamento de Estudios Sociales, Universidad Icesi, Calle 18 No. 122–135 Pance, Cali, Colombia
1. Introduction
This article explores discontinuity as an analytical lens to
revisit our studies on pottery-making. Drawing on long-
term ethnographic research in Aguabuena, a small close-
knit, Spanish-speaking rural community of potters in the
Colombian Andes, I address changes observed among
Aguabuena potters during the past two decades to reconsider
the social and material dynamics inside ceramic workshops
at a local scale and the presence of the potters’ wheel in these
processes. Specifcally, I focus on social transformations
within the Aguabuena community and territory, technological
changes in the ceramic manufacturing process, and surfaces
constructed and maintained with ceramic sherds. These
aspects, I argue, exemplify forms of discontinuity that
challenge the more lineal accounts on pottery-making and
invite us to reconsider the role of fractures and fragments,
both empirically and theoretically, in understanding
a signifcance of the discontinuities in the world of potters.
The ideas I present draw on ethnographic data taken during
various visits to the feld that had diferent duration and
combined diferent techniques (in 2001, 2006, 2009–2010,
2013, 2019). My interest in the relationships between
material culture and people guided me through participant-
observation of the social life of pots and potters, looking
at the various dynamics transcending the manufacturing
process of pots. I combined mapping, spatial analysis, in-
depth interviews and informal conversations, kinship charts,
material culture inventories, a pottery-making apprenticeship
building a detailed archive made of feldnotes, maps,
pictures, audios, and videos which aided me in witnessing
the transformations of Aguabuena from my frst arrival in
early 2000 and every subsequent visit as well. During this
time, the trusty and enduring relations I have managed to
build and maintain with some of the families allowed me to
explore more collaborative forms of research that helped me
to actualise my data through the remote feldwork.
For instance, discontinuity has been a key concept in
archaeology for addressing cultural and social change at
diferent scales of time and space. As Roux and Corty (2013)
Volume XII ● Issue 2/2021 ● Pages 281–295
*Corresponding author. E-mail: dcastellanos@icesi.edu.co
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received: 8
th
February 2021
Accepted: 28
th
September 2021
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24916/iansa.2021.2.13
Key words:
discontinuity
fractures in space and matter
ethnoarchaeology
ethnography
Aguabuena potters
Colombian Andes
ABSTRACT
Discontinuity plays an important role in the social and material world of Aguabuena potters, a small
rural community in the Colombian Andes. Drawing on long-term ethnographic feldwork, I explore the
changes in modes of production and gender division of work during the last decades of the twentieth
century and the fractures in space, memory, and materiality to address discontinuities in ceramic
production. The wheel and its transformations are taken as an important factor of these processes.
Against the common trend in the archaeology of Colombia to see pottery-making as a static craft,
rooted in an indigenous past, this article aims to revisit ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic data to
argue how cracks and gaps, besides empirical facts, can be seen as complex analytical lenses through
which to embrace ruptures and less linear narratives.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
282
classifcations are at the base of periodization intending to
correlate horizons of time with forms of social organization
of pre-Hispanic groups and by this means trace cultural
changes in indigenous societies through archaeological
materials. This “tyranny of typology”, as some critical
scholars call it (see Gnecco and Langebaek, 2006), has
undermined other interests including more technological
analysis crucial to understanding aspects of the cultural and
political ecology of ceramic production and modes, scale,
and specialization of craft-making. Moreover, the focus on
indigenous groups has overshadowed other interests towards
European or African infuences on pottery in Colombia
(despite the great mix of populations and cultural traditions
that historians have documented since early colonial times),
including the presence of the potters’ wheel or the innovations
of fring techniques through kilns after the Spanish conquest
or cultural traits coming with the arrival and settlement of
black slaves, themes only explored more recently within the
feld of Historic Archaeology (
e.g.
Therrien
et al.
, 2002; Ome,
2006; Mantilla Oliveros, 2016; Patiño and Hernández, 2020).
The interest in the pre-Hispanic past has also driven a few
ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological studies in ceramics.
Since the pioneering study of Ann Osborn on the pottery
of Tunebos (today the U´wa, an indigenous community of
the north-eastern Colombian Andes) in the late seventies,
the ethnographic present has interested scholars for the
remaining indigenous features that may link the past and
the present. In other words, an interest in continuity (and by
this token transformation) has led the approach to today’s
craft-making processes, while trying to establish a kind
of indigenous atemporal essence bridging archaeology,
ethnography, and ethnology.
In this context, the presence of the potters’ wheel, in
both the archaeological and ethnographic records, has been
understudied, as it is not considered a key element in the
understanding of the indigenous world. This research agenda
has been questioned more recently by other scholars who, on
the one hand, problematise the conceptualisation of a pre-
Hispanic indigenous past, free from colonial distortion (see
Langebaek, 2012; 2019; Rappaport, 2018), and on the other
hand, have documented the rich and complex social and
cultural dynamics of the colonial period, intervening and
re-signifying the indigenous lives and repositioning them in
the colonial period (see Therrien
et al.
, 2002; Ome, 2006;
Loboguerrero, 2001). In this same vein, the critical approach
of authors like Langebaek has been crucial in revisiting and
challenging ethnohistory and archaeology in light of their
fabrication of discourses and analytical models under the guise
of colonialism and despite their status as scientifc disciplines.
4
4
In one of his latest books “
Los Muisca
”, Langebaek (2019) shows how
the category of cacique and chiefdoms as a form of social organisation are
constructed and employed according to the interests of the colonial Spanish
ofcers of the sixteenth century onwards. Archaeology and ethnohistory still
perpetuate the colonial legacy which they intend to question by assuming
these categories as less critical which undermine the variability and cultural
diversity of societies encountered by the Spaniards upon their arrival to the
New World.
The haunting of the indigenous past in academic research
has made continuity a guiding aim in studying pottery-
making. This is expressed through ideas of the long duration
of techniques and technologies across spatial, temporal, and
social scales and which do not engage with the fuid setup
that, for example, colonisation brought in the Americas.
The categorisation of coiling as a “traditional indigenous
technique” vis-à-vis throwing as a typically European one,
established fxed boundaries for what were considered local
and traditional products versus what is classifed as foreign,
modern, and therefore non-indigenous. Furthermore, this
distinction is difcult to maintain empirically, as a vessel that
gets started on a potter’s wheel can then be fnished with the
coiling technique (see Arnold, 1985) and, more recently, in
typological studies revisions have been made in addressing
the complexity and richness of the archaeological materials
(see Therrien
et al.
, 2002).
The representation of pottery-making as a cultural
heritage of the Colombian nation has been another aspect
contributing to its fxed and stable image. For example,
Ráquira, the region where Aguabuena is located (Figure 1),
is identifed as a “
pueblo de olleros
” (a town of pottery
makers), a term frst coined in ofcial documents of the early
eighteenth century by Spanish ofcers describing the lives
of the indigenous people, and then made popular through
the joint collaboration of academic and applied research
in the area, to the extent of becoming a term widely spread
(see Duncan, 1998; Orbell, 1995; Mora de Jaramillo, 1974;
Ministry of Culture, 2014).
The two main archaeological surveys done in Ráquira
in the 1970s and 1990s (see Falchetti, 1975; Broadbent,
1974; and Therrien, 1991) documented the small scale of
ceramic production in contrast to the large scale reported
in documents of colonial times problematising the “pueblo
de olleros” name. These studies used ethnography as a tool
for gathering comparative data on ceramic materials tracing
today’s continuation in techniques and ceramic technologies
from the past.
Here it is worth mentioning the work of Monika Therrien
at length, for providing a middle ground in the tension around
the category “traditional” in Colombian archaeology. For this
scholar, transformation and continuity are mutually embedded
in the archaeological materials (Therrien
et al.
, 2002) and they
should not be generalised or extrapolated from one context to
another, but instead they need to be assessed at diferent scales,
ranging from regional patterns to singular archaeological sites
(Therrien, 2016). In this sense, her early work in the 1990s,
excavating an archaeological record from a discard area of
a colonial ceramic workshop in Ráquira, is pioneering in its
attempt to establish the coexistence of traditions that were
thought to be unrelated. For this purpose, she uses ethnographic
data from the region and other places in Colombia to enrich
her archaeological interpretations. She was able to compare
the pottery techniques from indigenous groups like the Tunebo
(Osborn, 1979) and Emberá-Chamí (Vasco, 1987) with the
ones she documented among living rural potters in Ráquira
or previous scholars registered in the same area (Broadbent,
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
283
1974; Mora de Jaramillo, 1974) and neighbouring towns like
Sutamarchán and Tinjacá (Falchetti, 1975) (Figure 2). Therrien
refers to the use of “
plato
”, a rudimentary form of wheel
consisting of a ceramic small plate placed on a wooden table on
the ground towards which the potter kneels to shape the vessel
while she manually spins the plate in a slow manner. This same
feature was ethnographically documented two decades before
by Falchetti (1975, p.212), who stated the possible nexus
between the
plato
and what she called the “proper wheel”, the
former characterised by slow and interrupted movements, while
the latter was by a rapid and continuous movement.
Data collected in Ráquira and surroundings empirically
proved the coexistence of diferent pottery manufacturing
techniques in archaeological and ethnographic materials (like
coiling and modelling) and the use of rudimentary wheels as
part of the ceramic technology employed in colonial ceramic
contexts with reference to other ethnographic contexts in
diferent regions and among diferent indigenous groups in
Colombia (Therrien, 1990, pp.40–41). Despite this evidence,
archaeologists still pursue “pure” categories of fxed
boundaries between what is indigenous and what is not, with
little interest towards hybridisations and forms of
mestizaje
also visible through ceramic technology.
Artesanías de Colombia (AC), a half-state, half-private
institution in charge of craft promotion, marketing, and
export in Colombia, represents another important actor
intervening on the ways state agencies and multilateral and
non-governmental organisations see and assess pottery-
making, as well as infuence academic research, through
its technology and capacity building programs. With
clear interventions in Ráquira since the sixties in both
design and technological transfer (
e.g.
implementation of
sustainable and clean technologies), AC has contributed to
tensions between the need for a renewal of traditions and
a search for innovation – and the sectors identifying with
those endeavours (the rural potters of Aguabuena being
representative of the more “traditional” side).
5
5
Let me illustrate this point with few examples. The AC initiative of
replacement of the usual coal kilns for electric or gas kilns with the fnancial
and technical support from international cooperation, although was
enthusiastically promoted by local majors, was widely rejected from the side
of Aguabuena potters. Few kilns were constructed, but potters used them
rarely and with time they preferred to quit them, arguing that it was more
expensive and riskier to fre pots in them than using their coal kilns. Vessels
came out raw or very “pale” (this is without the characteristically burnt
orange colour that identifes the craft from this region), potters claimed. In
these frictions also stand more traditionally oriented local discourses placing
the craft close to indigenous roots and as cultural knowledge transmitted
through kinship ties. Defending “la tradición” (the tradition), some potters
resist changes in their modes of production proclaiming themselves as
guardians of an endangered heritage.
Figure 1.
Location of Aguabuena within Ráquira. Red dots correspond to active ceramic workshops in 2007. Source: Rasmussen (2010, p.277).
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
284
3. Aguabuena: fractures in/through space and memory
Geographically, Aguabuena is one of the hills surrounding
the town of Ráquira in Andean Colombia. The name refers
also to the potters who live there, and who are related by
kinship and
compadrazgo
ties, and share land-tenure
practices. Despite having such a strong correlation with
a precise feature of the landscape, the place does not appear
in the political-administrative maps of Ráquira (which
includes all the districts that make up more than 233 km
2
of this territory). This invisibility in state records stands in
sharp contrast with the high visibility of the hill and renown
of its people and their ceramic products (which are popular
in the local and national handicraft market).
The name Aguabuena was frst coined as the name of a
fnca
(farm) owned by the grandfathers of a generation now in their
late seventies. This fnca was divided among six siblings and
their children. Over the years, this large extension of land
became fragmented across three generations in a scheme
of land tenure among peasants known as
minifundismo
(partible inheritance), a characteristic of the whole Boyacá
region and a process rooted in the colonial period (see
Borda, 1979). This system, however, overlapped throughout
the twentieth century with the practice of cousin marriage
as well as spatial residence patterns, creating a ramifed and
interwoven universe of kin relations and land rights. In sum,
the original property has been divided ever since among
siblings and their children. Today, “Aguabuena” clusters the
descendants of those inhabiting the area and whose kinship
ties, and also craft technology, have spread throughout the
territory (Castellanos, 2015).
Around the 1980s, those born in the Aguabuena fnca
became the people known and recognised as Aguabuena
potters, or the “people of the hill”, thanks to the creation of
Figure 2.
Locations of places and
indigenous groups mentioned in the text.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
285
an association which gained political recognition from the
local authorities. However, their acknowledgement did not
translate into a territorial reorganisation of Ráquira with new
limits for its rural districts. Aguabuena became a separate
social and spatial unit (with its own elementary school and
micro football pitch: two key types of infrastructures of
rural Colombia), but was not politically independent and
remained, instead, part of two rural districts (Pueblo Viejo
and Candelaria Occidente) (Figure 1).
The fragmentation of this territory has witnessed the (re)
population or emptying of the area, a phenomenon I have
followed since my frst arrival in the early 2000s. And
parallel to the peoples’ movement, Aguabuena has been
expanding or contracting. For example, between 2009 and
2010, there were 150 potters, divided among 30 workshops
scattered on both sides of a dusty road crossing the
hill (Figure 3). In December 2019, during a short visit,
I registered a highly decreased population of 20 potters and
no more than 4 workshops still active. This contraction,
however, has changed slightly with the pandemic of 2020,
as some families returned to their workshops, escaping the
large cities as a way to keep safe from the coronavirus and
economic crisis.
This instability gets inscribed spatially as Aguabuena’s
borders change too. During my frst feldwork, since no
ofcial map was available, I charted a map of the area
with the help of several of my informants at that time. The
territory’s boundaries showed the great instability of the
place as its limits were a contested issue among the same
potters. No matter how contradictory their answers were to
me, however, people’s depictions were always grounded to
their relatives’ locations.
For example, in 2001, Doris, a young potter woman said
about Aguabuena:
“Aguabuena is… you climb the hill and
there is a small path from there towards there
(she points
with her fnger drawing an imaginary line from one point of
the mountain to another one)
…but that is not Aguabuena,
instead it is Candelaria Occidente, but nevertheless is also
Aguabuena. Aguabuena is Teresa, the school, from there up
to Blanca and Samuel, then my brother, and from there you
follow a small path until you reach Yesid and Clotilde.
”
In 2009, Dori’s depiction of Aguabuena changed slightly as
one of the families moved downhill, establishing themselves
a bit further from the rest of the workshops.
The rapid adaptation that Aguabuena potters have
experienced relates also to the dynamism in which they
assume these changes, thanks to a great detachment from
their past. This lack of interest and of engagement towards
their ancestors and their craft contrasts with other craft
communities in Colombia, especially those with strong
ethnic identity and active in the politics of memory, keen in
perpetuating the craft as a cultural and ethnic heritage (see,
for example, Vasco, 1989; Chaves
et al.
, 2014). It also goes
against the narratives, discussed earlier, that state and private
actors along with academics have created of pottery-making.
Far from making them proud, or increasing their status in
the local setup, for younger generations in Aguabuena, being
a potter represents a certain backwardness and a stigma
for being dirty and covered with clay on their bodies and
clothes. Taken as a hard, poorly-paid, and exploited type
of work, youngsters have also been encouraged by their
parents to become “moderns” and therefore migrate to towns
employing themselves in diferent economic activities.
6
6
Although majority of young people have decided to quit pottery-making,
there is still a minority who see it as a legacy that they need to preserve. This
discourse is partly promoted by the arrival of urban people to Aguabuena
involved in a re-indigeneity process which has brought a revival of
indigenous ontologies and ways of living, including forms of agriculture
Figure 3.
View of a fragment of Aguabuena.
Picture taken in 2009.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
286
Contrary to the assumption of a direct link between today’s
craft and pre-Hispanic groups, potters do not explicitly relate
their ancestors or their craft to any indigenous populations
prior in the area upon the Spanish ofcers’ arrival. Instead,
potters declare themselves descendent of
los antiguos
(the
ancient ones), kindred whose presence is traceable through
ruins of kilns or abandoned workshops as well as ceramic
sherds scattered across the hills (Figure 4).
Los antiguos
,
although from a diferent time, are still contemporaneous
to them, as their traces are visible on Aguabuena’s surfaces.
Although not caring much about them or who they were, in
some cases potters trace back
los antiguos
in their kinship
descendent lines, although more often they ignore who they
were. This ambiguous relationship is not the same when they
assess the material remains which they clearly recognised
and crafts. Some of the abandoned ceramic workshops have been occupied
by these newcomer families who have tried to integrate into the Aguabuena
community.
were from another time, highlighting the diference in the
paste and the ceramic technology.
One day Teresa, one of my key informants, discussed
the diferences between ceramic sherds from
los antiguos
and those of current potters, she said: “Ceramics from
los
antiguos
are thinner and have a diferent colour; some
have decorations, whereas ours are thicker, mainly orange,
with no sand [used as temper].” The diferences pointed to
diferent techniques (of manufacturing and fring), which
in turn imply diferent uses. As the potters explained, “
la
loza antigua
(antique potware) served for cooking while the
current one is mainly for decoration”.
Other potters, though few, connect their craft to the Spanish
world, stating that the Augustinian monks who founded the
Candelaria Monastery (located at the bottom of Aguabuena
hill) at the end of the sixteenth century were the frst ones
to do pottery-making in the area. The claim is interesting
as it opens up the possibility to think of pottery craft as
a product of colonial encounters (
e.g.
between Europeans
Figure 4.
Kiln of los antiguos. Picture taken
in 2010.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
287
and indigenous populations), an idea which goes against
more essentialist portrayals of current pottery-making as the
survival of indigenous traditions.
4. Discontinuity inside ceramic workshops
My ethnoarchaeological research focused on the spatial
organisation and material culture of a small sample
of ceramic domestic workshops (8 in total) located in
Aguabuena. The aim of the project was to document,
a la
Schifer (1995), the cultural formation processes of ceramic
domestic production units as a step toward contributing to
alternative methodologies for interpreting the archaeological
records of ceramic workshops. For this purpose, I followed
the life cycle of vessels and mapped the activity areas of
the workshops with special attention to the discarded areas.
I combined this with participant-observation of the social
dynamics of households and their kinship networks, and the
life stories of potters and their ceramic objects. The project
aimed to problematise the low rate of ceramic material in
the previous archaeological surveys reported in the 1970s
Figure 5.
View of the enramada of an
Aguabuena fábrica. The picture captures
the moment when the kiln man fnished the
fring and is going to the house to rest after
36 hours of hard labour. Picture taken in
2006.
Figure 6.
Closer look at the tank and
timber cylinder where “moler” is performed.
Picture taken in 2006.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
288
and 1990s and the archaeological low visibility of ceramic
workshops, as opposed to the high frequency and visibility
seen in the present, and the craft specialisation suggested by
the colonial ofcers who visited the area, particularly in the
eighteenth century (Castellanos, 2004).
At the time I did my research, ceramic workshops were
transforming their mode of production: they were turning
into what potters called “
fábricas familiares
”,
i.e.
from
domestic production units into family factories (Figure 5).
Let me explain in more detail the changes which occurred
in the production process as a result; although it should be
noted other changes in the distribution and consumption
accompanied these transformations. In the frst mode, women
were in charge of the manufacturing techniques and men
were only involved in the fring, and pottery-making was
performed seasonally (coinciding with the dry months), and
the pots produced were utilitarian. The latter one, involved
the whole family in the manufacturing and fring, and it was
a full-time activity through which ornamental vessels were
produced. These changes meant, in turn, a higher investment
in technology with a rearrangement of the productive
space inside the workshop. For example, the one chamber
fuel kiln was changed for a coal kiln of bigger capacity for
which potters constructed a semi-closed and under roof
space, an attachment to the house, called “
enramada
”.
Other investments included the construction of a cement
tank in the open space where clay lumps were put together
with water and left for a couple of days before putting them
inside a timber cylinder connected to a wooden mill, then
put into motion with a mule herd led by potters (Figure 6).
This process, known as “
moler
” (to mill), allowed potters
to process the clay—bought from providers who brought
it from mines located in the region—much quicker and in
larger amounts than in the previous way in which potters
Figure 7.
Potter woman performing the
conar technique. Notice the ceramic plato on
the wooden board and two “conas” (vessel
shapes) at the back ready to be shaped.
Picture taken in 2009.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
289
would put the clay lumps (obtained in their own clay mines)
in pots, mix them with water and after some days display the
moist clay on the patio where they would mix the material
with sand (used as temper) with their feet, a physically-
demanding task called “
pisado
” (stepping).
This move towards craft specialisation in Aguabuena was
accompanied by readjustments in the potters’ wheel. The
ceramic
plato
, documented by earlier works and still used
by domestic workshops, was replaced by a steel mechanical
wheel known as a “
torneta
”. The change triggered
transformations in manufacturing techniques and the gender
division of work. The
plato
, a feminine object (sometimes
inherited from mothers to daughters), put on a wooden board
on the foor, was coupled with the kneeling body of a potter
woman who would be modelling a pot, a technique called
“
conar
”. This technique is said to be highly demanding,
requiring skill and body endurance and an old women’s
expertise no longer practised by young female potters
(Figure 7). In turn, the
torneta
, required a sitting body (male
or female) that would coil, in potters’ words “
armar
” (a pot)
until reaching the desired height (Figure 8). There, on the
torneta
, vessels were fnished by scraping their surfaces with
a sharp tool to smoothen the outside surfaces.
Potters recall the replacement of
platos
with
tornetas
at
the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s and as
a concomitant process with the construction of coal kilns.
The
torneta
was introduced by one of the main middlemen of
Ráquira, who also owns an industrial workshop in the town.
His constant travels to distribute pots to big cities and his
connections to Artesanías de Colombia (making him a regular
benefciary of innovation and building-capacity workshops)
exposed him to diferent technologies for manufacturing and
fring ceramics. Thus, technological innovations transformed
pottery-making in Aguabuena, although with an increased
Figure 8.
Potter man sitting in front of
a torneta smoothens the inside part of the
vessels after fnishing coiling. Picture taken
in 2006.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
290
dependency on middlemen (for acquiring raw materials and
for distribution and commercialisation of their craft) placing
potters in relationships of greater exploitation.
Despite production being considered easier to localise and
study, from an archaeological point of view, in contrast to
other economic activities like distribution and consumption
(see Costin, 1991), a closer look inside a ceramic workshop’s
microcosm reveals that some key activities are still difcult
to be traced in the archaeological record. The distinction
between fexible and restricted spatial activities proposed
by the ethnoarchaeological study of Arnold III (1991,
pp.100–101) points out these difculties, making us
reconsider the diferent archaeological visibility that ceramic
tasks may have in the production units.
For example, my data in Aguabuena showed that only
a very small proportion of ceramic waste is discarded and that
mostly broken pots or ceramic sherds are reused for several
purposes.
7
Moreover, most of the steps of manufacturing
which excluded fring were spatially fexible with low
archaeological visibility (Castellanos, 2004). Even a metallic
and heavy tool like the
torneta
had no specifc place in the
workshop and could be placed in several spots depending on
the spatial organisation of the working space and in response
to the diferent needs of a household. Located at times next
to clay stored ready to be used, the
torneta
could also be
found far from materials or other technological facilities
(Figures 9 and 10).
Indeed, spatially-fexible activities posed a methodological
challenge for my ethnoarchaeological study as it seemed that
there were no clear patterns for the activity areas of a ceramic
7
In a sample of 237 objects registered in 8 domestic workshops,
12.7% corresponded to discarded ceramic vessels and 58% to pots in
a reusable state (Castellanos, 2004, p.36).
Figure 9.
Potter woman scrapes a vessel
while watching TV with her oldest son.
Picture taken in 2009.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
291
argued, more than a concept itself, discontinuity defnes
a quality of change within the framework of evolutionary
theory addressing a cessation of transmission of a cultural
trait, for example, when there is a change in population (2013,
p.189).
1
Under this view, discontinuity is the benchmark to
a processual shift or turn in society, never directly observed
but rather inferred though diferent theoretical frameworks
of models of behaviour.
As for ethnoarchaeology, discontinuity yields the type of
analogy researchers can methodologically employ for their
ethnographic data to address their archaeological questions.
If there is a striking historical discontinuity between the
present and the past, such as diferences in population,
cultural traditions or environmental conditions, analogies
are considered less strong and therefore signifcantly less
robust. Gould and Watson called these analogies a “general
comparative approach” that is discontinuous in nature as
opposed to the “direct historical approach” emphasising
continuities through time (see Gould and Watson, 1982,
pp.371–372).
2
My approach to discontinuity is ethnographically oriented
and inspired in the more general material-culture studies feld
within Social Anthropology. Drawing from the “thinking
through things” call (see Henare
et al.
, 2007), I seek to engage
with artefacts and materiality in their own terms, following
how material fractures, gaps, and broken pieces embed and
animate social life within a context of ceramic manufacture.
This means, in the words of Henare
et al.
(2007, p.2),
“to take
‘things’ encountered in the feld as they present themselves,
rather than immediately assuming that they signify, represent,
or stand for something else”
. From this point of view,
concepts and things are not diferent (Henare
et al.
, 2007, p.1;
see Gordillo, 2014) and matter, therefore, conceptually speaks
from its own physicality. Keeping this in mind, discontinuity
is a quality not of change (like in the evolutionary theory) or
analogy, but of materiality observable in diferent surfaces: in
the soil, in the land and in the ceramic vessels or sherds. In
other words, the question being addressed in this article asks:
What does discontinuity, examined through broken surfaces
and ceramic fragments, tell us about potters and pottery-
making? And what would our studies on pottery-making gain
if in more analytical terms we embrace the discontinuities
that we empirically observe?
Of course, one could argue that archaeologists have
answered this question in various ways and through diferent
1
These authors propose to contextually locate the absence and presence of
cultural traits through units of transmission identifed as social, institutional
structures or populations (Roux and Corty, 2013, p.189). In their efort,
Roux and Corty (2013, p.189) bring to the fore Braudel’s three types of
historical time (long, medium, and short) corresponding, in turn, to changes
of diferent orders (social, circumstantial and event based), which is
an analytical framework very useful for archaeology.
2
Sillar and Jofré (2016) explore the uncritical use of “direct historical
analogies” in the Andes based on frequently stated or assumed historical
continuity. In their paper, the authors question the relevance of analogy
and call for a more detailed contextualisation of the ethnographic data
leading to a better assessment of the changing social context of the apparent
continuities.
methods, showing us indistinctively how fragments can
speak and inform us about the society and social system in
which they were produced. However, what other stories and
theoretical ideas may emerge if we consider fractures and
fragments themselves? What if we take cracks and gaps as
analytical lenses? And what can we say about those whose
experiences engage with fragmentations?
These questions are interesting to consider in light of the
potter’s wheel, an artifact associated with cultural change
and innovation within ceramic studies, somehow a mark
of discontinuity (see Knappett and van der Leeuw, 2014;
Roux, 2003). Despite its association with the specialisation
and intensifcation of craft making, the wheel has been
understudied in the archaeology of Colombia. This lack of
interest is partly related to the prevalence of stylistic analysis
in ceramic studies over more technological ones, as well as the
focus on the identifcation of Prehispanic indigenous traits in
the archaeological materials, an identifcation which excludes
the wheel for associating it with non-indigenous features.
Drawing from these presented ideas, the discontinuity
I refer to is spatially located rather than temporal, and
although signifcantly situated in a horizon of time of the
ethnographic present, still informs us on diferent (non-
lineal) temporalities.
3
My focus on discontinuity is threefold:
frst, the Aguabuena limits and the spatial distribution of
workshops across this territory; second, the distinction
between spatially fexible and fxed manufacturing activities
within the ceramic workshop; and third, the materiality of
paths made of ceramic sherds. In what follows, I expand
on these forms of discontinuity pointing at how they can
challenge and enrich our ways of studying pottery-making.
While doing so, I refect on how my ethnographic attention
to fragments has led me to think through cracks and gaps
analytically (Castellanos, 2020).
Before addressing these points, let me frst turn to the
ways in which pottery-making has been explored in the
Archaeology of Colombia and the scarce interest shown
for the potter’s wheel in these studies. As I shall show,
this limited attention relates to a strong engagement from
archaeology’s side to reconstruct a lineal history in which
indigenous past and present are linked without disruptions
and discontinuities.
2. Pottery-making and the wheel in the archaeology of
Colombia
Pottery-making is mainly explored from the stylistic point
of view in Colombian archaeology. With a prime interest in
defning ceramic typologies within cultural areas, stylistic
3
In their book “Ethnoarchaeology in action” David and Kramer (2001,
p.50) consider the limits set by the “tyranny of the ethnographic present” for
those studies whose ethnographic materials aim at answering archaeological
questions. Archaeology deals with change over the long term (diachronic),
whereas ethnography documents short-term variability (synchronic). The
diferences in temporality can be also described as the former engaging with
processes and the later with mechanisms.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
292
workshop in terms of use of space or distribution of material
elements, many of them being “portable objects” (see Costin,
1991, p. 19). The patio, for example, the open space of the
workshop and one of the most intense spaces in terms of its
use, however, got emptied every time a new activity would
start, erasing the possible records of these activities on the
surface. Space was emptied and reoccupied with various sets
of tasks, mixing the manufacturing and quotidian activities
of a household: drying a wet cloth, cooking or grilling on
an improvised hearth on the ground, drying and selecting
corn and beans for cooking or storing, family celebrations,
amongst other things.
Thus, constant circulation of people and things made
workshops a dynamic matrix where discontinuity arose
through the spatial disruptions of social rhythms, bringing in
turn a material juxtaposition and mixture that could be very
challenging in terms of possible archaeological traces. In the
same way, the specialisation and intensifcation of pottery-
making methodologically meant other forms of discontinuity
through the material record and a strong connection to
gender.
5. Encountering
desechos
Desechos
are main features of Aguabuena and refer to the
broken ceramic sherds that line the unstable paths across the
steep and mountainous landscape.
Desechos
populate and
construct this world and are key aspects in thinking through
discontinuity.
Thousands of coarse pottery fragments of all sizes and
diferent periods lie in Aguabuena: they ground existence in
various ways. In fact, broken pots remain visible, transformed
rapidly by their redundant exposure from special details
Figure 10.
An empty torneta next to a vessel
containing leftovers of dry clay. Notice the
two sticks used as scales to indicate the
height of some types of vessels. Picture
taken in 2006.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
293
into ones to be ignored; sherds are everywhere. Discretely
piled outside or inside ceramic workshops, sometimes as
improvised walls to act as windbreaks, or used as materials
for constructing houses, sherds can be used for diferent
purposes. Some also act as pavements for secondary roads or
part of the underground matrix of the soil strata (Figure 11).
Fragments endure while continuing to fragment further
because of the wind, dust and dryness that contribute to
the erosion of the place, while adding a special texture and
colour to the naked surfaces of Aguabuena’s mountainous
landscape.
In such a context, ceramic waste lies on the surface and
becomes the surface itself, just as many diferent materials
are found on the ground (Castellanos, 2020). For example,
an old timber kiln in a state of ruination stands beside pottery
fragments, some of which belong to
los antiguos,
some to
current potters. Thus, on the exposed felds with no grass,
fragments from diferent times lay next to each other, with
no clear association except for the processes (both natural
and human) of being discarded and that left them there.
These processes have not fxed things in certain areas but
contributed to the abrupt changes of the material record, as
sherds are reused for diferent activities.
As shown earlier, my initial research proved the dynamic
life of ceramic waste, since, contrary to my expectations,
most of the broken pots were kept for potential reuse (stored,
piled, or just scattered in the household or plots). For example,
more than merely a dumping spot, a pile of fragments from
diferent workshops on the road meant a cluster of current
and past pieces, used as artisanal pavement that would reveal
how sherds also shape and embed movement – and how
going uphill or downhill in Aguabuena often meant moving
across broken pieces of pottery.
This was clear to me during the several religious
processions in which I, accompanying my host family while
following the monks, stepped on sherds throughout the
whole path, also noticing their clinking as our feet caused
them to crack and collide with the surrounding sharp-angled
ceramic waste. This was not such a minor detail, if one thinks
(and bodily later bearing the consequences) of the numerous
hours that the processions would last (at least six hours) and
the corporeal experience of walking on uneven materials,
a soil of ceramics – some curved, some sharp, mostly orange,
but all musical. Moving across such spaces involved certain
(ceramic) aesthetics in which destruction and creation
conjoined (Castellanos, 2021). Cars and motorbike drivers
have also been aware of this, as they tend to be cautious of
driving on these roads during rainy months, arguing that the
mud and the ceramic pieces make them a truly
pista de jabón
(literally a ‘soapy road’;
i.e.
very slippery).
6. Revisiting pottery-making
This article has been an attempt to think through discontinuity
as it is ethnographically revealed in the feld and to pursue
its analytical implications for our studies in pottery-making.
Since my frst visit to Aguabuena in the early 2000s,
I have been confronted with several changes dealing with
fractures and ruptures of various kinds that have shown the
great dynamism of pottery-making, an activity otherwise
represented as more static in Colombian archaeology.
Among the most striking and obvious forms of
discontinuity stand the cracks of pots and the ceramic sherds.
As I have shown, these fragments are not inert matter but
continue to act on the world as reused vessels inside ceramic
Figure 11.
Broken or damaged pots waiting
to become part of the pavement of a road.
Picture taken in 2010.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
294
workshops, (dis)connecting paths or being the traces of
los
antiguos
. These forms of agency have led me to think of the
creative role of fragments and the role of pottery-making in
producing them and, by this token, the discontinuousness as
a locus of emerging possibilities both for (re)production of
life and theory.
Besides material discontinuity, I have considered other
social forms of discontinuity seen spatially at diferent scales
and with material implications. As shown earlier in the text,
Aguabuena has both increased and decreased its population
depending on the demand for ceramics as much as the desire
to make a living by diferent and less exploitable means,
desires which stand closer to the potters’ ideals for modernity.
Alongside these changes, workshops have emptied and
been locked, re-inhabited and re-opened. Some have been
abandoned for good and started to fall into ruin, while some
other empty workshops are being inhabited by other families
of potters who have moved in (or families from urban
places). These fragmentations also represent breaks within
the household, as families move within the same territory or
outside Aguabuena, or their children grow, have their own
families, and choose not to continue doing pots.
Today, pottery communities are in many ways disappearing.
Other scholars, like me, have written about the decreasing
number of living potters and the non-continuation of the
craft by younger generations within the families of long
and established pottery-making traditions (see, for example,
García-Roselló, 2008; 2017). This apparent end of craft
communities is, of course, relative, since pottery-making is
always a survival possibility for those families who return to
their original territories after unsuccessful migration or take
up the craft again when the market is in demand of ceramic
pots.
This idea of the diminishment of craft communities, links
to the presence of discontinuity in the social memory, a point
also explored in the text. Through the ruins and concept of
los antiguos
, Aguabuena narratives of the past are neither
lineal nor anchored in the atemporal indigenous time some
scholars tend to reproduce in their analysis. Instead, potters’
representations on their own history embraces the colonial
world through the fuid exchanges they acknowledge
between their ancestors and other actors – like the clerks
who came from Spain in the late 16
th
century.
The
torneta
arrived too, as part of the lively exchanges
the potters have with others. Brought by commercial
middlemen, it came to Aguabuena as a foreign tool together
with other fring technologies like the coal-kiln, changes to
which potters adapted by making men become fully involved
in the manufacturing processes. However, as the steel-
made tournette gained more popularity, the ceramic
plato
continued to be present. This coexistence of two rudimentary
spinning devices unfolds a scenario where discontinuity is
present with diferent nuances.
The wheel has propelled changes in the modes of
production and gender division of work. Moreover, it informs
us of the marginal and exploitative condition of potters
within a larger economic structure of the craft market. It also
talks about the relation to the past, as ceramic
platos
are also
part of the material record of
los antiguos
, and of today’s
old women potters’ role inside the ceramic workshop. Some
platos
stand abandoned in a corner of the workshop or are
being used for diferent purposes than shaping pots, while
the
tornetas
are being used less in times of decreasing
craft production. In this sense, the potter’s wheel becomes
a hallmark of disruption in terms of what is put aside, or left
behind, potentially reusable and resignifed, telling both of
the (non-lineal) past and the potters’ strivings for the future.
This last point is worth considering as it brings our attention
to the diferent temporalities displayed on the surfaces of the
ethnographic present.
References
ARNOLD III, P.J., 1991.
Domestic Ceramic Production and Spatial
Organization: A Mexican Case Study in Ethnoarchaeology
. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ARNOLD, D., 1985.
Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
BORDA, O.F., 1979.
El hombre y la tierra en Boyacá: desarrollo histórico
de una sociedad minifundista
. Bogotá: Punta de Lanza.
BROADBENT, S.M., 1974. Tradiciones Cerámicas de las Altiplanicies
de Cundinamarca y Boyacá.
Revista Colombiana de Antropologia,
16,
223–248.
CASTELLANOS, D., 2004.
Cultura material y organización espacial de la
producción cerámica en Ráquira. Un modelo etnoarqueológico
. Bogotá:
Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Nacionales, Banco de la
República.
CASTELLANOS, D., 2015. The Ordinary Envy of Aguabuena People:
Revisiting Universalistic Ideas from Local Entanglements.
Anthropology
and Humanism
, 40(1), 20–34.
CASTELLANOS, D., 2020. Caminar desechos. Refexiones desde las
superfcies de Aguabuena.
Bulletin de l’Institut Francais d’Etudes
Andines
, 49(1), 41–62.
COSTIN, C.L., 1991. Craft specialization: issues in defning, documenting
and explaining the organization of production.
Archaeological Method
and Theory
, 3, 1–56.
CHAVES, M., MONTENEGRO, M., and ZAMBRANO, M., eds., 2014.
El valor del patrimonio: mercado, politicas culturales y agenciamientos
sociales
. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia.
DAVID, N., and KRAMER, C. 2001.
Ethnoarchaeology in Action.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
FALCHETTI, A.M., 1975.
Arqueologia de Sutamarchán, Boyacá
. Bogotá:
Banco Popular.
GARCÍA-ROSEELLÓ, J., 2008.
Etnoarqueologia de la producción
cerámica. Identidad y territorio en los valles centrales de Chile.
Mayurqa.
Revista Annual d’Història,
32, Palma: Universitat del es Illes Balears.
GARCÍA-ROSEELLÓ, J., 2017. Cerámica, prácticas técnicas y estructura
social mapuche: un caso de dinamismo cultural.
Complutum
,
28(2),
341–357.
GNECCO, C., and LANGEBAEK, C.H., 2006.
Contra la tirania tipológica
en arqueologia: una visión desde Suramérica.
Bogotá: Universidad de
los Andes.
GORDILLO, G.R., 2014.
Rubble. The Afterlife of Destruction
, Durham and
London: Duke University Press.
GOULD, R., and WATSON, P.J., 1982. A dialogue of the meaning and use
of analogy in ethnoarchaeological reasoning.
Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology
, 1(4), 355–381.
HENARE, A., HOLBRAAD, M., and WASTELL, S. 2007.
Thinking
Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically
. London:
Routledge.
KNAPPET, C., and VAN DER LEEUW, S., 2014. A Developmental
Approach to Ancient Innovation: The potter’s wheel in the Bronze Age
east Mediterranean.
Pragmatics & Cognition
, 22(1), 64–92.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2021 ● XII/2 ● 281–295
Daniela Castellanos: Revisiting Aguabuena Pottery-making Through Discontinuity
295
LANGEBAEK, C. 2012. Experiencias oníricas, el más allá y el purgatorio
en la Nueva Granada. La demoniación de las entrañas americanas y la
conversión de los indios
. Boletin de Hiatoria y Antiguedades
,
99, 251–
307.
LANGEBAEK, C. 2019.
Los Muiscas. La historia milenaria de un pueblo
chibcha.
Bogotá: Editorial Debate.
LOBOGUERRERO, J., 2001. Objetos cotidianos en la historia de la
resistencia indígena en Colombia. Del documento de archivo al material
arqueológico.
Revista de Antropologia y Arqueologia,
13, 26–48.
MANTILLA OLIVEROS, J.C. 2016. Arqueología y comunidades negras
en América del Sur: problemas y perspectivas.
Vestigios-Revista Latinia-
Americana de Arqueologia Histórica,
10(1), 16–35.
MINISTERIO DE CULTURA, 2014.
Ráquira. De la casa a la olla
. Bogotá:
División de Patrimonio, Ministerio de Cultura.
MORA DE JARAMILLO, Y., 1974.
Cerámica y ceramistas de Ráquira
.
Bogotá: Museo Arqueológico Casa del Marqués de San Jorge, Banco
Popular.
OME, T., 2006.
De la ritualidad a la domestividad en la cultura
material. un análisis de contextos signifcativos del tipo cerámico
Guativita Desgrasante Tiestos entre los periodos Prehispánico,
Colonial y Republicano (Santafé de Bogotá).
Bogotá: Departamento de
Antropología, CESO, Universidad de los Andes.
ORBELL, J., 1995.
Los herederos del Cacique Suaya. Historia colonial de
Ráquira (1539–1810)
. Bogotá
́
: Banco de la Republica.
PATIÑO CASTAÑO, D., and HERNÁNDEZ, M.C. 2020. Arqueología
e historia de afrodescendientes en el Cauca, Colombia.
Revista
Colombiana de Antropologia
,
57(1), 125–162.
RAPPAPORT, J. 2018.
El mestizo evanescente: confguración de la
diferencia en el Nuevo Reino de Granada.
Bogotá: Editorial Universidad
del Rosario.
RASMUSSEN, D.M., 2010. Análisis espacio-temporal del cambio en
los bosques de roble (Quercus Humboldtii Bonpl).
Revista Colombia
Forestal
,
13(2), 275–298.
ROUX, V. 2003. A dynamic systems framework for studying technological
change: application to the emergence of the potter’s wheel in the southern
Levant.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
, 10(1), 1–30.
ROUX, V., and COURTY, M-A., 2013. Introduction to discontinuities
and continuities: Theories, methods and proxies for a historical
and sociological approach to evolution of past societies.
Journal of
Archaeological Method and Theory
,
20(2), 187–193.
SCHIFFER, M., 1995.
Behavioral Archaeology: First Principles
. Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press.
SILLAR, B., and RAMÓN JOFFRE, G., 2016. Using the present to interpret
the past: the role of ethnographic studies in Andean archaeology.
World
Archaeology
, 48(5), 656–673.
THERRIEN, M., 1991.
Basura arqueológica y tecnologia cerámica.
Estudio de un basurero de taller cerámico en el resguardo colonial de
Ráquira, Boyacá
. Unpublished thesis (MA), Universidad de los Andes.
THERRIEN, M., 2016. Displacing Dominant Meanings in the Archaeology
of Urban Policies and Emergence of Santafé de Bogotá (Colombia).
In: S. Montón‐Subías, M. Cruz, and A. Ruiz, eds.
Archaeologies of Early
Modern Spanish Colonialism
.
Switzerland: Springer, 11–38.
THERRIEN, M., UPRIMMY, E., LOBOGUERRERO, J., SALAMANCA,
M.F., GAITÁN, F., and FANDIÑO, M., 2002.
Catálogo de cerámica
colonial y republicana de la Nueva Granada: producción local, materiales
foráneos (Costa Caribe, Altiplano cundiboyacense, Colombia).
Bogotá:
Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueologógicas Nacionales.
VASCO, L.G., 1987.
Semejantes a los dioses: cerámica y cesteria Emberá-
Chami
. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
image/svg+xml