This report is an attempt to direct attention to the complexities of the relationship between ceramic manufacturing procedures and trace elemental studies, the relationship(s) being states in the form of 'null hypotheses' or 'assumptions.' These'assumptions,' as the term will be used below, are not statements about reality culled from existing literature on provenience studies; rather, they form an implicit, generally vague background to the interpretation of such studies, and need to be more explicitly stated as testable hypotheses. Preliminary investigation of some aspects of the relationship between ceramic manufacture and provenience studies is discussed here in the context of a research problem set in Guatemala.