Dean E. Arnold is adjunct curator of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and professor emeritus of anthropology at Wheaton College in Illinois. He has taught anthropology for forty-three years; done field work in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and the Southwest; and published three books, including the highly regarded, seminal work Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process and more than sixty articles about potters, pottery, and pottery production and related subjects, such as Maya Blue. Arnold was a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico and Peru, a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall at University of Cambridge in 1985, and a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Archeology there in 1985, 1992, and 2000. He received the Society for American Archaeology's Award for Excellence in Ceramic Studies in 1996. In 2003, he received the Charles R. Jenkins Award for Distinguished Achievement from the National Executive Council of Lambda Alpha (the National Collegiate Honor Society for Anthropology). He received the Wheaton College Senior Faculty Scholarship Achievement Award in 2001 and the Wheaton College Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Service to Alma Mater in 2008.

"Arnold has now prepared a compelling companion to his 2008 volume, making a quartet of salient publications about pottery and pottery-producing communities. In his new work he blends meticulous diachronic field research with keen insight and documents a substantive theoretical foundation. He draws together the results of many of his previous works, reevaluates and expands upon them, and offers fresh, new cogent analyses and explanations of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the pottery-making community through more than four decades.”—The Society for Archaeological Sciences Bulletin

Dean E. Arnold is adjunct curator of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and professor emeritus of anthropology at Wheaton College in Illinois. He has taught anthropology for forty-three years; done field work in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and the Southwest; and published three books, including the highly regarded, seminal work Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process and more than sixty articles about potters, pottery, and pottery production and related subjects, such as Maya Blue. Arnold was a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico and Peru, a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall at University of Cambridge in 1985, and a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Archeology there in 1985, 1992, and 2000. He received the Society for American Archaeology's Award for Excellence in Ceramic Studies in 1996. In 2003, he received the Charles R. Jenkins Award for Distinguished Achievement from the National Executive Council of Lambda Alpha (the National Collegiate Honor Society for Anthropology). He received the Wheaton College Senior Faculty Scholarship Achievement Award in 2001 and the Wheaton College Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Service to Alma Mater in 2008.

"Arnold has now prepared a compelling companion to his 2008 volume, making a quartet of salient publications about pottery and pottery-producing communities. In his new work he blends meticulous diachronic field research with keen insight and documents a substantive theoretical foundation. He draws together the results of many of his previous works, reevaluates and expands upon them, and offers fresh, new cogent analyses and explanations of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the pottery-making community through more than four decades.”—The Society for Archaeological Sciences Bulletin