George, we have all benefitted from your virtuoso research on ceramic chronology in eastern North America.



Journal articles, which are by definition short form essays, always involve difficult decisions about what to include within the word count limits. Increasingly, I find that journal editors encourage authors to emphasize methodology, interpretations, and broader impact, sometimes leaving little room for data presentation.



I wonder if you have tried to contact the authors directly, to ask them if a technical report or archived data set are available about this project, which might contain the information you are seeking?



If there is a link to the article, please share it! It sounds very interesting, I'm sure many of us would be like to read it.



 --Barb

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-----Original Message-----

From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of George Miller

Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 6:26 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: TPQ documentation



Thoughts on the use of Terminus post quem TPQ dates and documentation.

By George L. Miller



In the latest issue of Northeast Historical Archaeology Vol 48, 2019, an article by D. Hatch and Kerry Gonzalez titled “The Historical Archaeology of Eighteenth-century Tenancy at Snowen Park Site … Fredericksburg, Virginia” TPQ dates without any mention of the material type involved or the source of the information. They are as follows:



Page 82 “The artifacts recovered from the three post holes … indicate that the building was constructed after 1762 …. It is quite likely, judging from the 1762 terminus post quem of these features …”



Page 82 “Feature 41 had a TPQ of 1775, indicating that the addition was constructed after the main building had gone up.”



Page 84 “The TPQ for this stratum is 1795, suggesting that it represents fill related to abandonment of the site.”



Presumably all of these TPQ dates are all for ceramics, but how much trouble would it have been for the authors to have added the type of material involved and the citation to where they got the TPQ dates from.

Not all TPQ dates have equal values.  The 1762 date for Wedgwood’s perfection of his creamware is an event in time whereas the 1795 date for the use of polychrome underglaze colors on “Pearlware” is something that has been determined by research.  Was the creamware from the postholes dark creamware of the early period or the lighter creamware that followed it?

Noël Hume has a discussion of this in his article “Creamware to Pearlware:

A Williamsburg Perspective” in the 1972 Winterthur Conference Report Ceramics in America edited by Ian M. G. Quimby, pages 217-254.



Ann Smart Martin did an extensive study of references to the importation of creamware into the American colonies and came to the conclusion that there was not much evidence of it showing up before 1779 and then in the homes of rather well off households.  Give that, how early do you think creamware would be found in a tenant farm household?  Ann’s article is “Fashionable Sugar Dishes, Latest Fashion Ware”: The Creamware Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake” pages 169-188 in Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake Edited by Paul A. Shackel and Barbara J. Little.

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.



Figure 7 illustrates some of the ceramics from the CNEHA article.

Unfortunately it is in black and white and the text is mixed up.  If the illustration was in color, it would have been easier for the reader to connect the descriptions with the sherds.



Given that there are TPQ dates for many types of materials, it would be a good idea to tell your reader on what you are basing your date on and where you got the date.  There is a very extensive list of TPQ dates in the article “Telling Time for Archaeologists” in Volume 29 of Northeast Historical Archaeology by George L. Miller, Patricia Samford, Ellen Shlasko and Andrew Madsen.



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