Bartmann Goes Global - Exploring the Cultural Contexts, Meaning and Use of Bellarmine Jugs Across the Globe

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Bartmann Goes Global - Exploring the Cultural Contexts, Meaning and Use of Bellarmine Jugs Across the Globe," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The most successful of German products of the early modern period, encountered on sites across the world, is the stoneware container known as the Bellarmine or Bartmann jug. The distinctive Bartmann form was produced in huge quantities in Frechen but other centres along the Rhine. Most were specifically made for export, mainly to England or the Netherlands, and as a result of colonial expansion they travelled across the world and occur on early European settlements across the globe or are found on shipwrecks.

In this symposium we want to discuss the relationships between producer, market and consumer on a global scale and the range of cultural contexts in which the bellarmine jugs are found. We are particularly interested in papers from terrestrial and underwater archaeologists that explore the different global contexts these objects have been found in and how different temporal and geographical spheres impacted on their meaning and use.