The Archaeology of Crafts Learning: Becoming a Potter in the Puebloan Southwest

Individuals learning to make pottery must master knowledge of materials and a complex production sequence. Intergenerational transmission of knowledge and diffusion of knowledge are basic processes in all human societies. How individuals learn, what they learn, and from whom they learn become aspects of their identity. Theoretical perspectives on learning and historical documents describing learning provide background for archaeologists interested in how crafts learning occurred in the past. New methods enable archaeologists to examine learning from skilled potters in childhood and learning from other skilled potters and objects later in life among the Ancestral Pueblos. Differences in learning and teaching frameworks have implications for the archaeological record.