Abstract

The ethnographic literature shows that pottery use is uncommon among mobile hunter-gatherers. A number of factors inhibit use of ceramic pots in such societies, including the heaviness and breakability of pots, seasonal conflicts between gathering and pottery production, and low population numbers and low demand for pots. However, highly mobile groups of the late prehistoric Great Basin were able to resolve these issues and made pots. This paper examines how the production and use of earthenware pots was organized among the Paiute and Shoshone despite high residential mobility.