Revisiting Variation in Colonoware Manufacture and Use

Summary

Previous analyses (Cooper and Smith 2007, Smith and Cooper 2011) of Colonoware from 33 sites occupied during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by enslaved peoples in South Carolina and Virginia have revealed significant inter-regional variation in vessel abundance over time. Additionally, analyses of attributes such as soot residue and vessel thickness identified intra-regional homogeneity and heterogeneity in use and manufacturing techniques. This study tests whether these trends continue when the dataset is expanded to include five additional archaeological assemblages from South Carolina and two assemblages from Virginia. The patterns are then compared with geographic data on historic period exchange routes (over land and water), locations of Colonial and early American market centers, and variation in size of plantations and their enslaved populations to examine how the availability of wares and proximity to production hubs impacted the manufacture and use of Colonoware.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Beyond the Ethnicity Debate: Examining the Many Contexts of Colonoware

Keywords

Spatial Coverage