The Mystery of the Red Ceramics: Understanding a Unique Assemblage of Coarse Earthenware c.1680-1740

Summary

When European colonists began to expand beyond their initial fortifications at Charles Town landing, a community of early plantations was established along the Ashley River. The land that would later become Drayton Hall plantation was inhabited as early as 1680 and the archaeological remains relating to this occupation represent some of the earliest European domestic material culture in the area. During the last quarter of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth, the residents of the Ashley River region maintained close cultural and economic ties to the Caribbean and this is especially true of Barbados. Within the pre-Drayton contexts, a unique assemblage of burnished ‘red’ ceramics was recovered with possible links to the Caribbean. The ceramics are unusual in that they appear to be coarse earthenwares, but are highly fired and many appear to be skillfully burnished. This paper will examine the possible Caribbean provenance of these ceramics through the use of chemical analysis to further our understanding of the economic and cultural ties that exist between early colonial South Carolina and the sugar islands to the south.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rags to Riches: the Creation and Legacy of the Carolina Colony   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-63,04