Data from: New approaches to ceramic use and discard: cooking pottery from the Peruvian Andes in ethnoarchaeological perspective

Ethnoarchaeological data from contemporary Wanka villages in the Mantaro
Valley of the Peruvian Andes provide new perspectives on the use and
discard of ceramic cooking vessels. We present a regional survey of
ceramic vessel use and discard with household consumption as the focus of
study. A mathematical model determines vessel uselife from the age
distribution of in-use vessels. We examine the number of vessels per
household, their volume, their uselife, and their reported discard. A
typical Wanka household cooking vessel assemblage consists of four or five
ollas, two large ollas, one chata, and one tostadera. As family members
are added to a household, the number of household ollas slightly
increases, as does olla volume and the overall rate of olla discard. Large
families have fewer chatas, and the rate of chata discard is uncorrelated
with household size. Large and small families alike have only one
tostadera, but in large families, a shortened tostadera uselife increases
their discard rate. Distributing the same population into small or large
households will result in significantly different rates of total sherd
accumulation. Bulk sherd accumulation is a better indicator of the number
of households rather than of the total number of persons. Household size
can be estimated from the relative proportions of discarded ollas, chatas,
and tostaderas.