David Babson wrote:
> I do not think that this post accurately reflects what Leland Ferguson
> said about "Colono Ware," some 20 years ago. Initially, he was
> reacting
> to Noel-Hume's identification of the type as, simply, a continuation of
> pre-contact and contact-period Native American ceramic traditions into
> the colonial, or the post-contact period of the 18th and 19th
> centuries,
David:
The story is not nearly as simple as you represent it.
Both Ferguson and Noel Hume clearly stated that the origins of
"colono" could not have been European because, they believed, there was
no European tradition of such pottery among the colonizing population.
This assumption simply was not true. In Northern Ireland, whence came
so many servants to Virginia, two similar potting traditions were
current during the seventeenth century. Simultaneously, on the
Scottish islands, there were similar hand-built pots. In the Jutland
region of Denmark, hand-built pottery was on the market until the First
World War.
Below is a partial bibliography that is a basis for my comments on this
subject. For my complete article on the possible (probable, actually)
European antecedents of colono, see the full paper on our website. In
that paper, I discussed the discovery in Virginia of contemporary
examples at two contemporary seventeenth-century sites, one Native
American and the other European, during a period when there were few
Africans in the colony.
In Uncommon Ground, Ferguson boldly asserted African origins of the
Virginia version of colono, in spite of the fact that there were very
few Africans in Virginia at the time of the first flowering of the
ware. The reasoning Ferguson used to connect Virginia and Carolina
wares is wobbly at best, but it has exerted a profound impact on colono
studies, up and down the coast, for a generation.
As we all have seen, much colono research recently has focused on the
African component of the mixed tradition, in spite of the evidence from
various authors of both European and Native American sources for wares
that are indistinguishable from colono.
Clarke, Helen
1984 The Arch¾ology of Medieval England. A Colonnade Book published by
British Museum Publications.
Cordell, Ann S.
2002 Continuity and change in Apalachee pottery manufacture. Historical
Arch¾ology 36(1): 36-54.
Curwen, E. Cecil
1938 The Hebrides: A Cultural Backwater. Antiquity 12: 261-289.
Emery, Norman
1996 The Arch¾ology and Ethnology of St. Kilda, No. 1: Excavations on
Hirta 1986-1990. HMSO, Edinburgh.
Gu¶rœn Sveinbjarnard—ttir
1996 Lerker ‡ êslandi (Pottery found in excavations in Iceland).
Icelandic National Museum.
Heite, Edward F.
1993 Folk technology transfer and creolization reconsidered. Quarterly
Bulletin Archeological Society of Virginia 48:1-13.
Holleyman, G. A.
1946 Tiree Craggans. Antiquity 21: 205-207.
Ivens, R. J.
1988 Notes on Medieval Coarse Pottery in the Ulster Museum. Ulster
Journal
of Arch¾ology 51:127-131.
Lynggaard, Finn
1972 Jydepotter & Ildgrave. J. Fr. Clausens Forlag.
Madsen, H. J.
1983 An introduction to Danish medieval ceramics, in Peter Davey and
Richard
Hodges, editors, Ceramics and Trade. University of Sheffield.
Mann, Ludovic McLellan
1908 Of a pottery churn from the Island of Coll, with remarks on
Hebridean
pottery. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 6
(Fourth Series): 326-329.
Meyers, Allan D
1999 West African Tradition in the Decoration of Colonial Jamaican Folk
Pottery. International Journal of Historical Arch¾ology 3: 201-223.
Ogata, Kerry Lynn
1995 African American Women and Medicine: Expanding Interpretations of
Colono Ware. MA Thesis, University of South Carolina.
Old Mobile Project
1995 French Potters and Pottery on the Gulf Coast. The Old Mobile
Project Newsletter, issue 13, Fall 1995.
OÕSullivan, Aidan
1998 The Arch¾ology of Lake Settlement in Ireland. Discovery Program
Monograph 4. Dublin
Peacock, D. P. S.
1982 Pottery in the Roman World: an ethnoarch¾ological approach.
Longman.
Quail, Gerard
1979 Craggan Ware. Scottish Pottery Society Archive News 4:39-46.
Steensberg, Axel
1940 Hand-made Pottery in Jutland. Antiquity 14: 148-153.
Edward F. Heite
Heite Consulting, Inc.
Archaeologists and Historians
P O Box 53, Camden, Delaware 19934
www.heite.org
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