Dear Histarchers,

I'm searching for information on clay roofing tiles.  Specifically, I am working on a submerged site (probably a ballast pile or dump) in Pensacola, Florida in conjunction with my thesis on the maritime landscape of the Pensacola waterfront.  The ballast pile in question is covered with fragments of terra cotta roofing tile and little else, besides rocks.  The age of the pile is unclear.  It is visible on more recent aerial photos, but is not depicted on historic maps.  As of yet, no historic documents have been uncovered that mention this pile.  Therefore, the clay roofing tiles may be the only age indicator.

The tiles examined so far appear to be flat, interlocking clay roofing tiles.  Stamped into some of the broken tiles are fragmentary imprints, maybe representing company names, tile style names, or production location names.  These include "D ETIENNE" or "B ETIENNE" and "RIOUE L" as well as a myriad of shorter fragmented imprints.  

I have already searched Google, Google Scholar, JSTOR, Historical Archaeology (SHA), Worldcat and Worldcat Dissertations.  Although I did not exhaustively read the synopsis of every hit, I was disappointed by the lack of relevant archaeological references to historic clay roofing tiles.  Most of the hits referenced Greek and Roman tiles or the preservation of historic building roofs.  Nothing jumped out at me, other than a few sources only available from one library in Australia. :)  I hope that there are numerous references out there buried in non-indexed book chapters and gray literature.  If anyone has done a fair amount of research into clay roofing tiles, I would appreciate your assistance in identifying these tiles.  If anyone has compiled a bibliography of relevant sources (especially about tiles commonly used in the South and the tile companies that produced them), that would be amazing!  Please email me off-list.  I'd be happy to provide my results to the entire listserv once I've compiled the responses (if any).

Sincere thanks,
~Kendra Kennedy
UWF Graduate Student, Maritime and Historical Archaeology 

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