David R. Abbott
Associate Professor
Ph.D., Archaeology, Arizona State University
SHESC Theme: Societies and their Natural Environments
Field Specializations: Archaeology, Agrarian Societies, Ceramic Technology, Cultural Ecology, Exchange and Social Networks
Regional Focus: North America (Southwest)
Contact: David R. Abbott, SHESC 358
Research:
Since completing his doctoral studies in 1994, David R. Abbott has designed and conducted a long-term research program focused on the ancient pottery of central and southern Arizona. His work is dedicated to modeling the exchange and social networks that composed the prehistoric Hohokam regional system, investigating the impact of large-scale irrigation on sociocultural evolution and developing the unique contribution that ceramic research can make to the study of prehistoric communities. This work has depended on multidisciplinary teams of graduate student assistants, private-sector archaeologists, geologists and chemists.
Abbott joined the ASU faculty in August 2004 following 10 years as an independent consultant and a research associate at the Arizona State Museum. Before coming to Tempe, he partnered with various archaeological companies engaged in federally and state-mandated excavation projects spurred by modern development in the Phoenix metropolitan area. During that time, he was the principal investigator on three multi-year research grants from NSF and Southwest Parks and Monuments Association.
By combining those efforts under one research umbrella, and with the assistance of physical scientists for compositional analyses of the pottery, Abbott has developed precise, efficient and inexpensive methods to pinpoint ceramic production sources and trace the distribution of earthenware containers within the Phoenix basin. This new methodology has demonstrated a remarkably sophisticated division of labor for pottery production during prehistoric times; a regional-scale economy that was more complex than previously imagined; and possibly sufficient trade in irrigation-produced surpluses to power the regional economy. These findings have led to new and markedly different conceptions of Hohokam economics, community organization and the evolution of Hohokam society.
While at ASU, Abbott has established the Laboratory of Sonoran Ceramic Research, where he is continuing to pursue his long-term research program. His lab employs two half-time graduate student research assistants funded through contracts from two private-sector archaeological companies. Several additional contracts are currently being negotiated. Abbott is also contributing his expertise in the prehistory of the Sonoran Desert to the production of research proposals by two multidisciplinary research teams at ASU. These efforts are devoted to providing a deep-time perspective for understanding the intertwined socioecological processes of differing duration, intensity and geographic scope that determine the legacies of human and environmental relations in south-central Arizona.
Research Projects:
Alliance and Landscape: Perry Mesa in the Fourteenth Century
Calderwood Butte Ceramic Analysis
Laboratory of Sonoran Ceramic Research (LSCR)
Legacies on the Landscape
Long-Term Coupled Socioecological Change in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico
The Promise and Challenge of Archaeological Data Integration
Teaching:
Abbott has developed a course on research methods in archaeology that directly involves advanced undergraduates in his laboratory's on-going research and provides the students with hands-on experience in all stages of the research process. He has also been asked to sit on two anthropology doctoral committees, assist in the doctoral research of a student in Life Sciences and serve as the director of a Senior Honors Thesis committee. In the future, he anticipates developing undergraduate and graduate classes pertaining to quantitative methods in anthropology, ceramics and Hohokam archaeology.
Select Publications:
Abbott, D.R., Lack, A.D. & Moore, G. (2008). Chemical assays of temper and clay: Modeling pottery production and exchange in the uplands north of the Phoenix basin, Arizona, USA. Archaeometry, 50(1), 48-66.
Abbott, D.R., Smith, A.M. & Gallaga, E. (2007). Ballcourts and ceramics: The case for Hohokam marketplaces in the Arizona desert. American Antiquity, 72(3), 461-484.
Abbott, D.R. (2006). Hohokam ritual and economic transformation: Ceramic evidence from the Phoenix basin, Arizona. North American Archaeologist, 27(4), 285-310.
Abbott, D.R. (Ed.). (2003). Centuries of decline during the Hohokam Classic period at Pueblo Grande. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Abbot, D.R. (2002). Ceramic markers of ancient irrigation communities. In B.L. Shears, G.E. Rice, P. Lindauer & H. Yoshida (Eds.), Anthropological Field Studies No. 99-1. Tempe: Northland Research.
Abbot, D.R., Stinson, S.L. & Van Keuren, S. (2001). The economic implications of Hohokam buff ware exchange during the early Sedentary period. Kiva, 67, 7-29.
Abbott, D.R. (2000). Ceramics and community organization among the Hohokam. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Abbott, D.R. & Walsh-Anduze, M.E. (1995). Temporal patterns without temporal variation: The paradox of Hohokam red ware ceramics. In B.J.Mills & P.L. Crown (Eds.), Ceramic production in the American Southwest (pp. 88-114). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Abbott, D.R. & Schaller, D.M. (1994). Ceramics among the Hohokam: Modeling social organization and exchange. In D.A. Scott & P. Meyers (Eds.), Archaeometery of pre-Columbian sites and artifacts (pp. 85-109). Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute.
