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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Lindsay Bloch
Lindsay Bloch*
Affiliation:
Research Laboratories of Archaeology, CB3120, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3120 (lbloch@live.unc.edu)
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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.

A diferencia de muchos objetos del siglo XVIII, que fueron totalmente importados, también se produjeron cerámicas utilitarias de manera local dentro de las colonias americanas. En la región de Chesapeake, se sugiere que estos objetos de producción local estaban reservados principalmente para aquellos que no podían participar directamente en la economía de crédito transatlántico fomentado por el sistema de consignación de tabaco. En lugar de depender de las características visuales ambiguas para la identificación de este tipo de cerámicas, en este estudio se utilizó el análisis elemental LA-ICP-MS. El conjunto de datos incorpora muestras de sitios históricos de manufactura cerámica de la regiones del Atlántico Medio y Gran Bretaña, lo que representa doce zonas de producción geológicamente distintas. Cerámicas utilitarias de contextos domésticos de plantaciones (ca. 1690–1830), de diferentes estatus social, fueron asignados a estas zonas de producción de acuerdo a la composición elemental similar. Los resultados demuestran la diversidad de fuentes de estas cerámicas, tanto locales como importadas, a las que los residentes de Chesapeake podían acceder. A través del tiempo, hubo una disminución constante en el uso de las mercancías importadas a favor de los productos fabricados localmente. No se observaron grandes diferencias entre las unidades domésticas de las plantaciones de estatus sociales diferentes, lo que sugiere que estas mercancías cotidianas eran igualmente disponibles y utilizados por todos, tal vez siendo una de las estrategias de aprovisionamiento de las plantaciones. La omnipresència de cerámicas locales es evidencia de la fortaleza pragmática de las políticas de producción local.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 81 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 231 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the Society for American Archaeology.

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