An Elemental Approach to the Distribution of Lead-Glazed Coarse Earthenware in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake

Abstract

Unlike many goods in the eighteenth century, which were wholly imported, utilitarian coarse earthenwares were also produced locally within the American colonies. In the Chesapeake region, it has been suggested that these local wares were primarily reserved for those unable to directly participate in the transatlantic credit economy fostered by the tobacco consignment system. Rather than relying on ambiguous visual attributes to identify these wares, this study utilized elemental analysis via LA-ICP-MS. Coarse earthenwares from domestic plantation contexts of varying social status were assigned to production zones based on shared elemental composition with a reference dataset. This reference dataset incorporated sherds from historic earthenware production sites across the mid-Atlantic and in Great Britain, representing 12 geologically distinct production zones. The results emphasize the diversity of coarse earthenware sources that Chesapeake residents accessed, both local and imported. There was a steady decrease in the use of imported wares in favor of domestically made products over time. There were no sharp differences among plantation households of different statuses, suggesting that these everyday wares were equally accessible to all, perhaps via plantation provisioning strategies. The omnipresence of local wares is evidence for the pragmatic and political strengths of local production.

Which town did it come from?: Sourcing locally-made ceramics in the Mid-Atlantic

“…Many techniques exist for sourcing ceramics, with NAA and LA-ICP-MS being among the most common. While LA-ICP-MS has been successfully used in the Middle Atlantic (Bloch, 2015, 2016), historical archaeologists have not previously used NAA to source vessels in this region. Yet this technique has several advantages over LA-ICP-MS. NAA is a bulk-sampling technique, with clay and inclusions being analyzed together; LA-ICP-MS lets researchers spot test a sample’s clay fraction, thereby avoiding inclusions (Bloch, 2015; Stoner and Glascock, 2012).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, no follow-up study was conducted. The second study used laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to analyze waster vessels recovered from 37 potteries in the Middle Atlantic and England to source coarse earthenwares recovered from plantation sites in the Chesapeake region of Virginia and Maryland (Bloch, 2015, 2016).…”

“…Despite the paucity of such studies, there are several important research questions Middle Atlantic historical archaeologists can ask if we source more of our ceramics. As Lindsay Bloch’s (2015, 2016) work shows, one possible avenue is exploring the rise and spread of global trade networks, the development of local ceramic industries, and the financial practices that facilitated them (also see Scarlett et al., 2007). We could also address the role ceramics played in colonial and/or capitalist political economies (e.g., Pezzarossi, 2015; Rodríguez-Alegría et al., 2013; Rodríguez-Alegría and Stoner, 2016; Van Oyen, 2016).…”

The Work of Boundaries: Critical Cartographies and the Archaeological Record of the Relatively Recent Past

“…Since 1995, novel methods in laboratory techniques that help determine the movement of ancient peoples or things, including ancient DNA, stable isotope analysis, and compositional characterization, have also become standard. Specifically, LA-ICPMS (laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) (Bloch 2016, Gentelli 2019, Klesner et al 2019) and pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence) (Craig 2021, Dussubieux & Walder 2015, Fischer & Hsieh 2017) have facilitated numerous studies that focus on characterizations within a particular region, where things that do not match are considered imports. In addition, studies of human migration mobility have proliferated with the development of stable isotope analysis and ancient DNA.…”