The 17^th century saw the solidification of settler colonialism in Virginia following an initial period of fragile occupation. Not only did this process radically reconfigure colonial cultural boundaries but also shaped the trajectory of economic systems and relationships that ultimately would define the eighteenth century. Yet, these practices were not necessarily operations bound to reach a predefined end, nor monolithically enacted in their application across the region. Using coarse earthenware as a lens, we explore variations in patterns of economic practice among colonial communities (elite and indentured Europeans, free and enslaved Africans, and Indigenous communities) in these formative years. We first offer an overview of the imported and locally produced ceramic types available during this period. We then interrogate what variations in the abundance of these different types among eight 17^th century assemblages reveals about the mechanisms of market access and exchange operating during this crucial period of America’s development.

The collaborative project spearheaded by DAACS, “Cracking the Colonoware Code: Characterizing Ceramic Recipes and Production Communities in Early America” aims to better understand communities of practice through the examination of colonoware from sites across Virginia and the Carolinas. Samples will undergo several levels of analysis to answer questions about production and use. One component of this project includes the application of digital imaging methods first tested by Marcoux et al. (2023) using colonoware assemblages from South Carolina Lowcountry sites. These replicable methods produce quantitative data associated with key pottery-making choices: temper type/density and clay-forming techniques. This paper reports on the preliminary results of applying these methods to assemblages included in the DAACS colonoware project. To this, we add an attribute-level analysis of vessel form. We synthesize this data within their respective geographic and temporal contexts, thereby contributing to a growing understanding of colonoware’s variability across a robust and multi-sited study.

The first five decades of the South Carolina colony are often portrayed as a period of significant economic development – from modest beginnings in global trade as a producer of timber, cattle, and deerskins, to a meteoric rise as a global leader in rice production. Throughout this period, enslaved Native Americans and Africans were essential to the economic success of the colony. Despite their importance, we have little understanding of how the changes of this period played out within enslaved households. In this paper, we explore pottery as an important material component in and consequence of daily life for enslaved people. Our sample includes pottery assemblages from households spanning the shift from the economy of initial settlement to rice cash-cropping. Our analysis explores several dimensions including fabric, vessel form, provenance, and method of manufacture, with the aim of identifying patterns associated with diversity in foodways, identity, and economic practices.

In 1913, Almon Wheeler Lauber published “Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States,” a comprehensive account of Native enslavement in what we now recognize as the Shatter Zone in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern colonial regions. Lauber documented multiple enslaved Native American groups, who took them, and where they were sent. This includes specific locations within the multiple colonies Natives were taken from and the areas in the Caribbean these people were sent. Additionally, he is often able to identify which colonial forces (Spanish, French, or English) were enslaving Indigenous populations. This paper presents a first attempt at synthesizing these data and combining it with known archaeological data, specifically ceramic attributes of surface decoration and temper of the named indigenous groups in the Southeast, to create a starting point for identifying ceramic markers of enslaved Native Southeastern potters in the colonial Caribbean.

Dr. John de la Howe immigrated to Charleston in 1760 and established Lethe Farm in the Backcountry in the 1780s. Steen conducted three seasons of archaeology at Dr. de la Howe’s home site in the 1990s and identified at least 15 structures, including residences of an overseer and enslaved workers. Unusual for Backcounty sites, roughly 5,000 colonoware sherds were recovered from a structure interpreted as the kitchen. In the years since recovery, the assemblage has contributed to a more complex understanding of the origin of the pottery and the ethnicity of the potters, topics that have beset South Carolina archaeologists for decades. In this paper, we discuss why the collection continues to be important to colonoware research and what steps we are taking to prepare the collection for inclusion in DAACS. We also offer a preliminary assessment of colonoware types and refined and coarse earthenware abundance using Galle’s abundance index.

Accotink Quarter (44FX0223) is an outlying farm quarter site located on an early to mid-18th century tobacco plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia. Excavations by Thunderbird Archaeology in 2012 revealed the presence of two distinct structures interpreted as an enslaved laborers’ dwelling and an overseer’s house. Intact sub-floor pit features associated with each structure yielded a remarkable quantity of colonoware sherds. This assemblage presented a unique opportunity to conduct a project, funded by The Conservation Fund, of attribute-based analysis and thorough vesselization by physical mending. This resulted in the identification of several dozen unique vessels, many with clearly identifiable vessel forms. This paper discusses the formal and functional variation in this colonoware assemblage and draws comparisons between the sub-assemblages recovered from the two structures, with an interest in understanding the material needs and preferences of the quarter site’s occupants and situating them in the context of the northern Virginia colonoware tradition.

Elemental analysis has become a fundamental tool in archaeological ceramics research. When combined with detailed macroscopic attribute data, it provides critical insights into production traditions across multiple geographic scales. This paper presents recent research supported by The Conservation Fund that identifies and examines colonoware production communities in Virginia during the 17th-19th centuries.

We report results from LA-ICP-MS analyses of 185 colonoware samples from 20 domestic assemblages distributed throughout the Coastal Plain and Piedmont regions. We refine and standardize descriptions of existing colonoware "recipes" by integrating elemental composition results with attribute data, and connect these groupings to production zones. Through identification of the recipes characteristic of these zones, we provide insights into the geological constraints and cultural choices that influenced production techniques. This approach enhances our understanding of how colonoware producers -- enslaved and free African, African American, and Indigenous people -- contributed to, circumvented, and even disrupted traditional European markets.

The coarse earthenwares from the village at Galways Plantation, an eighteenth-nineteenth century sugar plantation on the island of Montserrat in the eastern Caribbean, represent enormous research potential. Jean Howson excavated and analyzed the collection during the 1980s. Howson catalogued over 7,000 sherds, examining vessel sizes and forms and performing some cross-mending. Thirty-five years after their excavation, these materials are currently housed at Central Connecticut State University, where they are being entered into DAACS and re-interrogated with fresh research questions. In this paper, we give an overview of the initial research and outline future directions, including the many questions that remain and how we might address them using both comparative collections and contemporary methods.

This paper aims to elucidate the cultural dynamics behind the production and distribution of coarse earthenwares on the island of Jamaica in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. We use reproducible methods to identify compositional groups in 445 coarse earthenware sherds sampled by the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) and characterized by NAA. Vessels from distinct compositional groups were recovered in a variety of contexts across in the island, indicating both multiple production loci and market exchange. A complementary analysis of a subset of sherds using LA-ICP-MS offers a chance to validate the NAA-derived groups. It also demonstrates that pots comprising some of the NAA groups were manufactured in England, further supporting the inference of market exchange

Market constraints, along with shared production methods and raw materials have resulted in broadly similar locally made coarse earthenwares across Jamaica. Using fine-grained attribute data from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), coupled with elemental sourcing information, we interrogate whether multiple cohesive historic coarse earthenware types can be defined on the island. Attributes such as production technique, paste color and inclusions, and vessel form resolve into clearer patterns related to particular historic production locales when considered in light of NAA compositional groups. Further, we investigate variation in vessel function as related to production origins through analysis of wares produced for domestic use, and those made for the large-scale refining of sugar, the primary cash crop over much of the island.

During the 1980s, archaeologists working on St. Eustatius (Statia) found fragments of locally made earthenware pots, known as Afro-Caribbean ware, within a variety of urban and plantation contexts. Archaeologists had begun to study similar pottery produced on other islands, but we knew little about when, how, or why the pottery found on Statia was made and used. In 1987, as part of my dissertation research, I visited Nevis, interviewed and worked with island potters, and researched pottery forms and production on the island in the 19th and 20th centuries. More recent elemental analyses have informed our understanding of the chemistry of clays used on several islands and enabled us to better understand the movement of pottery historically. Although production has diminished significantly over the last 40 years, Nevisian pottery continues to shape local identities and practices today.

During data recovery excavations for the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project in 2023, two small thin-bodied vessels were recovered from privy fill at a tenement dwelling. They are made of an unidentified type of coarse earthenware. The deposit, rich with early 19th-century domestic refuse, has a TPQ of 1865, but was probably sealed by 1870 and buried under nine feet of upper fill. Residents of the house included US-born and immigrant families, none Black or known to be Native American. If the vessels are Colono, the forms and sizes are unusual. The wares may be locally made, or someone, perhaps a soldier, may have acquired them when travelling. We touch upon previous research on wares identified as Colono from Northeast sites, and explore (non-Colono) Indigenous attribution including Catawba. Paste analysis (anticipated) may provide a place of origin. We invite symposium attendees to examine the wares.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Catawba women of the South Carolina Piedmont worked to provide supplemental income to their families by producing and trading coarse earthenware pottery. Their thriving ceramic trade began as early as the 1770s and extended across South Carolina to the Lowcountry region. Lowcountry archaeologists have attributed the ceramic type “River Burnished” to these Catawba potters, but this link has yet to be tested with archaeological evidence. In this paper, I explore the range of variation in Catawba trade pottery by comparing suspected Catawba-made colonowares from Lowcountry sites that are contemporaneous to 18th and 19th century Catawba Piedmont villages. To identify choices and customs in pottery production, I compare attributes including paste composition, vessel form, and surface treatment that are indicative of steps in the production process. This preliminary research provides insights into the variation of Lowcountry colonowares and the communities of practice reflected in production.