Counting Pots in Kalinga, Philippines: Short-And Long-Term Change in Household Assemblages

Archaeologists often quantify static archaeological collections, but ethnoarchaeologists encounter material possessions as fluid and mobile, and sometimes hard to pin down and count. I illustrate this point with one example of an ethnoarchaeological count — the ceramic vessel inventory — using data from two seasons (2001 and 1987-88) of the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project in Kalinga Province, the Philippines. Detailed analysis of inventories from the 2001 field season demonstrates that the effects of common errors and inconsistencies do not appear to be large and that short-term fluctuations have only a limited effect on the number and types of vessels owned, so that inventory data can be productively compared across time and space. Ceramic use and ownership significantly decreased in the 13 years between field seasons, accompanied by a shift in cooking techniques in which fewer foods were boiled for long periods, an activity for which ceramic vessels are well suited.