Itinerant Potters in the Andes

Itinerant Potters in the Andes: The Swallow Model of Ceramic Production presents a new interpretative approach to pottery production and distribution. Based on extensive fieldwork data from the northern Peruvian Andes, it explores the swallow potters, itinerant artisans who seasonally leave their hometowns to produce ceramic pots in destination towns, both near and far. These itinerant artisans have been recorded ethnographically in the Peruvian territory since the late nineteenth century. However, archaeologists and art historians tend to ignore them in their explanations of Andean material culture, insisting on a static image of the past. Moreover, nearly all of the general interpretative concepts and models of the precolonial Andean world are based on decorated ceramics and on a model of a potter who stays put and works in their hometown. This book argues that comprehensive explanations of Andean history must incorporate undecorated pottery and must consider various types of potters. This novel perspective uses the swallows to propose a more dynamic reading of Andean ceramic evidence, in which these potters are understood as part of broader inter-communal Andean migration patterns that have persisted since precolonial times. This book will be of great interest to researchers in Andean Archaeology and Ethnography as well as pottery specialists from around the world.