The number of people who have helped me pursue this long project is so extensive that I cannot possibly name them all. I apologize to those I inadvertently overlook here. I would like to acknowledge financial support for this project received through Travel to Collections grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1984 and 1986, an Astor Visiting Lecturership at Oxford University in 2010, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2010–2011. Additional support for research for this book came from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Chair in the Social Sciences, and the Alice S. Davis Endowed Chair in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and from the Bowditch Endowment controlled by Professor Gordon R. Willey at Harvard University.
My deep appreciation goes to the curators, collections managers, archivists, and photographic staff who I worked with: at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Una MacDowell, Vicki Swerdlow, Steve Burger and Katherine Meyers; at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Ann McMullen, Patricia Nietfeld, Emily Kaplan, and Nathan Sowry; at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, David Rosenthal, James Krakker, James di Loreto and Kristen Quarles; at the Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, Kathe Lawton, Carrie Parris, and Jessica Melancon; at the Brooklyn Museum, Nancy Rosoff and Ruth Janson; at the Royal Ontario Museum, April Hawkins and Justin Jennings; at the Musée du Quai Branly, Fabienne de Pierrebourg; at the Castello d’Albertis Museum, Genoa, Maria Camilla De Palma; at the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, Maria Gaida; at the British Museum, Colin McEwan and Leonora Duncan; at the Manchester Museum, Stephen Welsh; at the National Museum of Denmark, Cecilia Leni; and at the Museo de San Pedro Sula, Pam Dávila, Teresa Campos de Pastor, Rodolfo Pastor, and Davíd Banegas.
I was able to study Honduran materials from projects led by William Duncan Strong forming part of the collections of the National Museum of Natural History as a Smithsonian Fellow in fall, 2015, sponsored by Dr. Gwyneira Isaac. My examination of Honduran ceramics from the former Heye Foundation collection now part of the National Museum of the American Indian was advanced by an invitation from Dr. Alex Benitez, who headed a project funded by the Smithsonian Latino Center to bring specialists in Central American archaeology to the nmai, ably assisted by Lynn Godino. I would like to acknowledge the enthusiasm of Ranald Woodaman of the Latino Center for the project and its products.
My understanding of Ulua Polychromes is deeply rooted in fieldwork experience in Honduras that began in 1977 when I was an undergraduate on a project directed by Dr. John S. Henderson of Cornell University, and continued with doctoral and postdoctoral projects in collaboration with him and with Dr. Julia Hendon. Lic. Carmen Julia Fajardo, Dra. Eva Martinez, and the late George Hasemann provided archaeological oversight of these projects in their roles as heads of the departments of archaeology, investigations, or patrimony of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History and I acknowledge them with gratitude. Multiple Directors of the Institute, including Ricardo Agurcia, Victor Reyes, Olga Joya, and Darío Euraque, encouraged these projects. Juan Alberto Durón and Isabel Perdomo, staff of the Institute’s north coast center in La Lima, were integral support for my fieldwork.
Julia Hendon, who I first met in Honduras, has long been my reliable collaborator on projects through which we have explored both the social theories that underpin this book and the specifics of the Honduran past. It was she who pointed out that what I was proposing to do was a new way to write object biographies, and I thank her for that transformative comment. Other colleagues with whom I shared fieldwork in Honduras, especially Genie Robinson, Kevin Pope, and Christina Luke, contributed to my understanding of Ulua Polychromes and the closely related Ulua marble vases. Outside of the Ulua Valley, René Viel, whose doctoral dissertation on Ulua Polychromes is the landmark study of the twentieth century, has always been welcoming of my ideas on these and other ceramics. Stephen Whittington, Allan Maca and Cameron McNeil each graciously shared information about Ulua Polychromes they excavated at Copán. Leroy Joesink-Mandeville and Boyd Dixon freely exchanged data with me, allowing me to better understand the Comayagua Valley context of Ulua Polychromes. Kenn Hirth, as a member of my doctoral committee, reinforced the significance of work on ceramics in his comments on the dissertation, leading to the late insertion of an appendix summarizing my data on ceramic development in the Ulua Valley, the first step toward this book.
Conversations with students and visiting researchers during my years as curator of the Honduran collections at Harvard, including Sheila Findlay, Chris Fung, Marilyn Beaudry-Corbett, Silvia Salgado, and the late Gerald Kennedy, were significant in my developing ideas. Since moving to Berkeley, I have been privileged to work with exceptional students, Scarlett Chiu, Jeanne Lopiparo, and Andy Roddick, whose thoughts on pottery, practice, and identity have had so great an influence I can hardly hope to recognize them adequately.
Finally, as ever, this book would simply not exist if it were not for Rus Sheptak. He served as photographer in countless museum visits where we reviewed vast collections. His doctoral dissertation made clear to me the need to link the pre-colonial and colonial periods. This book is as much a testimony to his engagement with Honduras’ past as it is to mine.