Clay Fingerprints: The Elemental Identification of Coarse Earthenwares from the Mid-Atlantic

Summary

Working with fragmentary collections, it is often difficult for archaeologists to assess potentially diagnostic vessel forms or surface treatments on utilitarian ceramics. It is therefore a challenge to identify the production origins for many of these wares. Surveying the products from 24 historic earthenware kiln sites in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, this paper considers the reliability of visual attributes such as paste color and inclusions for distinguishing the products of different potters and traditions. Elemental analysis is used as an independent line of evidence to characterize the clays that compose these wares, creating compositional groups that mark geographic boundaries of production. The synthesis of visual and elemental data provides insight into how archaeologists should describe and interpret these wares in their collections. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016   •
• The Production and Archaeological Analysis of 18th and 19th Century American Ceramics

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 181