Hi Kendra,
If you are dealing with ballast, rather than a local Florida producer,
you might contact someone in the Archaeological Ceramic Building
Materials Group.
http://www.geocities.com/acbmg1/
You'll note that they are mostly anglophiles, but will have contacts
with Dutch and Spanish scholars working on tile and brick. They are
also compiling a bibliographic index of CRM reports dealing with
ceramic building materials. Some of the officers are listed here:
http://www.geocities.com/acbmg1/member.htm
You might contact Phil Mills, the virtual secretary. You can reach
him at: [log in to unmask]
Cheers,
Tim
On Jul 15, 2008, at 11:34 PM, Kendra Kennedy wrote:
> 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 lis!
> tserv once I've compiled the responses (if any).
>
> Sincere thanks,
> ~Kendra Kennedy
> UWF Graduate Student, Maritime and Historical Archaeology
>
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