Through the first half of the 20th century, this pottery was called La Plata, following Earl Morris’ work in the La Plata drainage at the Colorado-New Mexico border. While he used the term generically for his finds, it came to be the type name for the earliest segment of Northern San Juan Black-on-white wares. It was contemporary with Chapin
Grayware.
Eventually, some investigators felt the Mesa Verde-area version of this type should be distinguished from the other early San Juan B/W (La Plata) ceramics
(Abel 1955). The name ‘Chapin Black-on-white’ was proposed. Although Hayes saw this as unnecessary splitting
(Hayes 1964), the majority of those working on the Wetherill Mesa project favored the new term, and it became conventional. As recently as 1980, some expressed preference for the older name and practice
(Cattenach
1980:210). Early reports do not reflect the change, using La Plata as a blanket term for all the pottery in that area and separating styles by time rather than type names
(Morris 1939). The
Listers' 1978 Anasazi Pottery (a photograph-rich revision of The Earl H. Morris Memorial Pottery Collection (1969, University of Colorado Press – N. 16- Series in Anthropology) also naturally follows the Morris terminology, using ‘La Plata’ for vessels that today would typed Chapin.
Crushed rock temper and mineral paint are the basis of the Chapin type. Contemporaneous types differ: La Plata has sand temper; Lino (Black-on-gray) has sand temper and carbon paint
(Breternitz et
al:26). Thus temper can distinguish non-local wares. Contemporaneous pottery of neighboring areas is called La Plata
(Cibola tradition), Lino (Kayenta), Rosa (upper San Juan), and Crozier (Chuska)
(Wilson and
Blinman:46). Not all previous publications have followed this convention: Lucius and Breternitz (17) used ‘Chaco’ instead of
Cibola, and reserved Crozier for the Piedra period of Chuska, using Theodore for the Chuska analog to Chapin. It is beyond the scope of this project to make comparisons or conclusions about neighboring types, or to fully explore the nomenclature. Sources for that information – for all types – include the CCPA report
(Wilson and
Blinman), the Varien Appendix A(1) in the Sand Canyon Site Testing report, and Prehistoric Ceramics of the Mesa Verde Region
(Breternitz et
al).
The Listers have made the obvious but significant observation that temper is hard to establish in whole vessels
(Lister and Lister
1978:3). Because the absence of sherd temper is a principal distinguishing characteristic for Chapin, and because the Chapin B/w (La Plata) designation was originally based largely on whole vessels, it is possible that occasional sherd temper has missed getting into the definition. This point is raised because in the course of the FLC reanalysis project, a few sherds were encountered which appeared very Chapin-like in all other ways, but had sherd temper.
Chapin and Piedra have been distinguished from each other mainly by design
(Hayes and
Lancaster:111). Wilson and
Blinman, discussing the intermixing of Chapin and Piedra characteristics in PI pottery throughout the 800s, declare any distinction between the two ‘arbitrary’ (47). However, using two sets of tree-ring-dated sites, Hayes and Lancaster reported a valid
Chapin-Piedra sequence. They compared ceramics from La Plata pithouses, tree-ring-dated to the 600s, with sherds from Site 1676 and Badger House, dated 250 years later. The pithouse sites yielded only Chapin. At the later sites, Piedra appeared in the first half of the 700s, increased to 15% of the B/w sherds by AD 750, and dominated the assemblage by 775-800. At those sites, Piedra was dominant throughout the 800s, with the transition to Cortez style coming at about AD 900
(Hayes and Lancaster :111,
114).