ATTRIBUTES, MODES, AND 10TH CENTURY POTTING IN NORTH CENTRAL KANSAS

To understand the dynamics of culture change we must have artifact des criptions that allow us to: (1) identify the sequences of acts in trad itional ways of making artifacts; (2) isolate the evidence for a given act such that it may be examined and, if necessary, manipulated to as sume alternate states and/or values; (3) assign greater or lesser anal ytical value to the various acts in a sequence; and (4) create explici t criteria for assigning greater or lesser value to the occurrence ord er of acts in a sequence. These conditions can be met by a production stage grammar of and for artifact analysis and description. This point is illustrated by developing a production stage grammar for a sample of early Upper Republican ceramics from om four sites in north central Kansas A similar approach to the study of Woodland stage ceramics fro m the same area is then used to identify, those modifications of potti ng practices that would indicate a Keith variant ancestry for Upper Re publican wares.