This study uses ceramic data from northern Rio Grande Coalition and Classic period (A.D. 1250-1600) sites to examine the changing nature of ceramic production and exchange. Specifically, I address how ritual changed ceramic economy by stimulating increased specialization and value-based exchange during a period of population aggregation and agricultural intensification. Aggregation of unrelated households as a result of migration raised population density and increased contact between socially distant people, necessitating more complex, multi-level communication and decision-making networks within and between settlements. New ritual systems, based in communal ceremonial feasting, increased demand for ceramic food preparation and serving vessels, while also serving to integrate these new co-resident groups.

I argue that an expanded system of communal feasting conferred added social value on serving and cooking vessels used at these occasions and increased demand for them. This stimulated increased ceramic production among a limited number of producers with restricted access to skills, materials, and ritual knowledge. South of Frijoles Canyon and Santa Fe, manufacture of Glaze ware vessels offered an economic alternative for migrants arriving initially from the Western Pueblos and subsequently from early Glaze ware production centers. Demand for their products allowed them to create new exchange-driven social relationships with people only distantly related, based on the specific qualities of the goods themselves. Similar demand for Biscuit ware in the north had a comparable effect. Value-based exchange relationships supplemented the existing reciprocal, debt-based system. The relative degree of specialization increased, from production for household use to a system of part-time independent specialists, producing for exchange in excess of household and reciprocity needs.

To increase understanding of emergent social complexity, I analyze ceramic attributes such as vessel size, slip color, and design, and identify geologic sources of vessel temper to determine distribution patterns of two Glaze types, two Biscuit types, and micaceous culinary ware. I then show how population movement, aggregation, and a new ideological system combined to produce changes in ceramic production and exchange, and link these changes with developments in settlement and social organization at the Coalition (A.D. 1150–1325) to Classic (A.D. 1325–1600) period transition in the northern Rio Grande.