WILHELM G. SOLHEIM, II

Two general purposes in the excavation of most archeological sites are to
place the site in a time and cultural context with other sites and to dis-
cover as much as possible about the internal organization, or the culture,
of the society whose remains are being excavated. In those sites where pottery is
present it often makes up the majority of the portable artifacts recovered and so
should be one of the most important sources of information. The use of ceramic
evidence for placing sites in context is widespread and of long standing, but
pottery, of itself, has only recently and rather narrowly been used to gain in-
sight into the internal organization of a community. It is the purpose of this
paper to examine one general approach for the greater use of pottery to gain
information on internal organization.

The approach suggested here is to examine the uses of pottery in living com-
munities, observing how this is related to the organization of these communities;
and from this to work backwards in time to see what can be said about and from
the pottery of the past. This report can best be called suggestive, with the pos-
sibility that the subject will warrant more extensive and detailed examination in
the future. Data are presented from Southeast Asia using the area as a whole
without attempting to examine even one community in depth. Only portable
pottery is considered, omitting any form of architectural ceramics, such as bricks,
tiles, molded or modeled elements of architectural decoration, etc.

Pottery performs a number of different functions in a society, which, for the
purposes of this paper, are classified in three different levels from the point of
view of the pottery: (1) its functions to the user, i.e., the physical functions of
the pottery; (2) its functions to the manufacturer, i.e., economic and psycholo-
gical; and (3) its functions to the community, both within the community and
outside it, in its relations with other communities.

The functions of pottery in terms of its use must be further subdivided, and
here one must be arbitrary. Two major subdivisions are used, partially because
there is a certain amount of tradition behind them. These are "utilitarian" and
"ceremonial." These terms carry certain ethnocentric viewpoints with them
which are undesirable. For example, certainly ceremonial items are of utility,

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