University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations December 2016 To Temper or Not to Temper: A Petrographic Textural Study of Clays and Formative Ceramic Sherds from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico Cheri Lynn Price University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Price, Cheri Lynn, "To Temper or Not to Temper: A Petrographic Textural Study of Clays and Formative Ceramic Sherds from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1404. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1404 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. TO TEMPER OR NOT TO TEMPER: A PETROGRAPHIC TEXTURAL STUDY OF CLAYS AND FORMATIVE CERAMIC SHERDS FROM THE VALLEY OF OAXACA, MEXICO by Cheri Price A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Anthropology at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee December 2016 ABSTRACT TO TEMPER OR NOT TO TEMPER A PETROGRAPHIC TEXTURAL STUDY OF FORMATIVE PERIOD CERAMIC SHERDS FROM THE VALLEY OF OAXACA, MEXICO by Cheri Price The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016 Under the Supervision of Professor R. Jason Sherman Ceramics are one of the best forms of material culture archaeologists can use to analyze questions of social, political, economic, and ideological complexity. The purpose of this thesis research is to determine if the clays used to manufacture later Middle Formative-Terminal Formative ceramics in the Valley of Oaxaca were tempered or otherwise modified by looking at texture of sherds petrographically.