2022 Martin-Orrell Grant Announced
Congratulations to Maren Hopkins and her collaborator Kelsey Hanson on winning the 2022 Martin-Orrell Grant. This annual $5,000 award is named in honor of two of AA
HS members who left substantial bequests to the Society. Hopkins will work with the legendary Mata Ortiz potter, Juan Quezada.
Drawing upon ethnographic and archaeometric methods, the project will characterize Mr. Quezada’s clay procurement and processing techniques. In a pilot project conducted in 2021, Maren Hopkins and Mr. Quezada began mapping clay sources near Mata Ortiz as a way to recognize clay procurement as an important component of the Mata Ortiz pottery tradition. With this grant they will identify the chemical compositions of these clays at each stage of pottery production, and determine how they are affected at different stages of the pottery-making process. Combining ethnographic and archaeometric data in this way will help illustrate some of the qualitative, chemical, and mineralogical transformations that occur throughout pottery production and offer new ways of framing expectations in archaeological studies that are based on interpretations of ceramic compositional data.
