Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Aesthetics and Politics of Ceramic Production

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Brandi L. MacDonald at the University of Missouri, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist examining the intersection of aesthetics and politics in the production of ceramic vessels. The proposed research examines novel and highly specialized polychrome ceramics. While engaging with research concerned with the roles of sense and spectacle, this project investigates political aesthetics through the lens of production. The central empirical question this project investigates is: how was polychrome ceramic production organized socially and spatially? Focusing on the production of the kero, the project will produce fine-grained mineralogical and geochemical data in order to identify and distinguish the scales and sites of kero production. The proposed project will focus on three key stages in the manufacture of keros during which raw materials were procured: 1) the selection of clays; 2) the selection of tempers (non-clay mineral/organic substances added to clays prior to forming and firing ceramic vessels); and 3) the selection of pigmentaceous materials. The project will employ petrography to investigate the selections of clays and tempers, Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and Neutron Activation Analysis to investigate the selection of clays, and portable X-ray fluorescence and Raman Spectroscopy to investigate the selection of pigmentaceous materials. More broadly, this project will expand upon previous scholarship investigating the role of craft production in the social and political relations of early states. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.