The Potters' Perspectives

Book excerpt: The work of Fernand Braudel (1949) should have revolutionized the way archaeology conceptualizes temporal scales and builds chronological narratives. Even though Braudel's general views did impact archaeological theory deeply, his three different time-scales, together with insights into duration as the inner dialectic between different temporalities, remain neglected in archaeological practice. Nowadays, ceramic chronology building in archaeology still relies on two main variables: time-space and pottery styles. This book aims to challenge this paradigm and propose a new way for narrating vital chronologies. The point of departure for this endeavor consists of a longue durée geographical unit, the valley of Juigalpa, in central Nicaragua. Through a view of materials - and especially ceramics - as complex and embodied palimpsests, as the bundling of unfolding traces; a chronology including five different intervals based on ceramic technologies is presented, from the first traces of human practices in 300 CE through to the present. Natalia Donner (PhD, Leiden University) is an Argentinian-Mexican archaeologist, whose work questions the epistemological and colonial foundations of Archaeology. She is lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities (Leiden University) and co-director of the project Darien Profundo, (Panama) which explores the deep history of the land bridge of the Americas.