Painted Pottery of Honduras: Object Lives and Itineraries

366 Pages·2017·8.46 MB·English

by  Rosemary A. Joyce

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Series Editors
Corinne L. Hofman (Leiden University)
Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen (Leiden University)
Editorial Board
Sonya Atalay (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Benoit Bérard (Université des Antilles et de la Guyane)
Alexander Geurds (University of Oxford, Leiden University and University of
Colorado)
Nikolai Grube (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität)
Rosemary A. Joyce (University of California, Berkeley)
Jason Laffoon (Leiden University)
Leonardo López Luján (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico)
Eduardo Neves (Universidade de São Paulo)
Karoline Noack (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität)
Stephen Rostain (CNRS - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Angel Iván Rivera Guzmán (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e
Historia, Mexico)
Roberto Valcárcel Rojas (Centro de Investigaciones, Servicios Ambientales y
Tecnológicos (CISAT), Cuba)
VOLUME 6
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/eahc
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fo yre t to sa rudnoH P de tnia P
Object Lives and Itineraries
By
Rosemary A. Joyce
leiden | boston
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The number of people who have helped me pursue this long project is so ex-
tensive that I cannot possibly name them all. I apologize to those I inadvertent-
ly overlook here. I would like to acknowledge financial support for this project
received through Travel to Collections grants from the National Endowment
for the Humanities in 1984 and 1986, an Astor Visiting Lecturership at Oxford
University in 2010, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fel-
lowship in 2010–2011. Additional support for research for this book came from
the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Chair in the Social Sciences,
and the Alice S. Davis Endowed Chair in Anthropology at the University of
California, Berkeley, and from the Bowditch Endowment controlled by Profes-
sor Gordon R. Willey at Harvard University.
My deep appreciation goes to the curators, collections managers, archivists,
and photographic staff who I worked with: at the Peabody Museum, Harvard
University, Una MacDowell, Vicki Swerdlow, Steve Burger and Katherine Mey-
ers; at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution,
Ann McMullen, Patricia Nietfeld, Emily Kaplan, and Nathan Sowry; at the Na-
tional Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, David Rosenthal,
James Krakker, James di Loreto and Kristen Quarles; at the Middle American
Research Institute, Tulane University, Kathe Lawton, Carrie Parris, and Jes-
sica Melancon; at the Brooklyn Museum, Nancy Rosoff and Ruth Janson; at
the Royal Ontario Museum, April Hawkins and Justin Jennings; at the Musée
du Quai Branly, Fabienne de Pierrebourg; at the Castello d’Albertis Museum,
Genoa, Maria Camilla De Palma; at the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, Ma-
ria Gaida; at the British Museum, Colin McEwan and Leonora Duncan; at the
Manchester Museum, Stephen Welsh; at the National Museum of Denmark,
Cecilia Leni; and at the Museo de San Pedro Sula, Pam Dávila, Teresa Campos
de Pastor, Rodolfo Pastor, and Davíd Banegas.
Director Viola Koenig of the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum welcomed my
research there. At the Manchester Museum, Director Nick Merriman approved
my research, which followed up on correspondence with former Keeper of
Ethnology George Bankes. While the Pitt Rivers museum proved not to hold
any Ulua Polychromes, Curator Dan Hicks and researcher Alice Stevenson
were gracious hosts of my research on Honduran collections there. Successive
directors, Professors E. Wyllys Andrews, iv and Marcello Canuto, approved ac-
cess to collections at the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane Univer-
sity. Miriam Zapata, Director of the Museo de Comayagua, welcomed me for
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viii Acknowledgements
a p ublic talk about my work on Ulua Polychromes, and shared with me an un-
published study of the iconography of an Ulua Polychrome from Comayagua.
I was able to study Honduran materials from projects led by William Dun-
can Strong forming part of the collections of the National Museum of Natu-
ral History as a Smithsonian Fellow in fall, 2015, sponsored by Dr. Gwyneira
Isaac. My examination of Honduran ceramics from the former Heye Founda-
tion collection now part of the National Museum of the American Indian was
advanced by an invitation from Dr. Alex Benitez, who headed a project funded
by the Smithsonian Latino Center to bring specialists in Central American ar-
chaeology to the nmai, ably assisted by Lynn Godino. I would like to acknowl-
edge the enthusiasm of Ranald Woodaman of the Latino Center for the project
and its products.
My understanding of Ulua Polychromes is deeply rooted in fieldwork ex-
perience in Honduras that began in 1977 when I was an undergraduate on a
project directed by Dr. John S. Henderson of Cornell University, and continued
with doctoral and postdoctoral projects in collaboration with him and with Dr.
Julia Hendon. Lic. Carmen Julia Fajardo, Dra. Eva Martinez, and the late George
Hasemann provided archaeological oversight of these projects in their roles
as heads of the departments of archaeology, investigations, or patrimony of
the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History and I acknowledge them
with gratitude. Multiple Directors of the Institute, including Ricardo Agurcia,
Victor Reyes, Olga Joya, and Darío Euraque, encouraged these projects. Juan
Alberto Durón and Isabel Perdomo, staff of the Institute’s north coast center in
La Lima, were integral support for my fieldwork.
Julia Hendon, who I first met in Honduras, has long been my reliable col-
laborator on projects through which we have explored both the social theo-
ries that underpin this book and the specifics of the Honduran past. It was
she who pointed out that what I was proposing to do was a new way to write
object biographies, and I thank her for that transformative comment. Other
colleagues with whom I shared fieldwork in Honduras, especially Genie Robin-
son, Kevin Pope, and Christina Luke, contributed to my understanding of Ulua
Polychromes and the closely related Ulua marble vases. Outside of the Ulua
Valley, René Viel, whose doctoral dissertation on Ulua Polychromes is the land-
mark study of the twentieth century, has always been welcoming of my ideas
on these and other ceramics. Stephen Whittington, Allan Maca and Cameron
McNeil each graciously shared information about Ulua Polychromes they ex-
cavated at Copán. Leroy Joesink-Mandeville and Boyd Dixon freely exchanged
data with me, allowing me to better understand the Comayagua Valley con-
text of Ulua Polychromes. Kenn Hirth, as a member of my doctoral committee,
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Acknowledgements ix
r einforced the significance of work on ceramics in his comments on the dis-
sertation, leading to the late insertion of an appendix summarizing my data on
ceramic development in the Ulua Valley, the first step toward this book.
Silvia Salgado, Geoffrey McCafferty, Larry Steinbrenner and Carrie Dennett
have maintained ongoing discussions of Honduran ceramics and their rela-
tionships to pottery from Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I gratefully acknowledge
the opportunity of being a member of the doctoral committees of Carrie Den-
nett at Calgary University and Patrice Bonnafoux at the Université de Paris,
and the masters committee of Norma Knowlton at Trent University, for the
contributions they made to clarifying relationships between ceramics from
Honduras and neighboring countries.
Conversations with students and visiting researchers during my years as cu-
rator of the Honduran collections at Harvard, including Sheila Findlay, Chris
Fung, Marilyn Beaudry-Corbett, Silvia Salgado, and the late Gerald Kennedy,
were significant in my developing ideas. Since moving to Berkeley, I have been
privileged to work with exceptional students, Scarlett Chiu, Jeanne Lopiparo,
and Andy Roddick, whose thoughts on pottery, practice, and identity have had
so great an influence I can hardly hope to recognize them adequately.
Finally, as ever, this book would simply not exist if it were not for Rus Shep-
tak. He served as photographer in countless museum visits where we reviewed
vast collections. His doctoral dissertation made clear to me the need to link
the pre-colonial and colonial periods. This book is as much a testimony to his
engagement with Honduras’ past as it is to mine.
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