Sorry, but I cannot let anyone put forth this reference as a legitimate piece
of archaeology. The only place the "Stephenson pottery works" existed is in
Dr. Benson's imagination. I was present at the Symposium, where her work was
treated as a joke. The "pottery," according to Stan Baker, who saw the site
before it was destroyed, was a brick cistern. The products of the Stephenson
pottery as presented in Dr. Benson's report consist of a congeries of material
surface collected over a large area, including Point Pleasant, Ohio, tobacco
pipes, glass marbles (yes, there was a glass factory there, too, as well as an
iron furnace in the 1770s, according to Dr. Benson's sources.)
When asked why there is no documentary evidence for any of this industrial
activity, Dr. Benson says that these were part of a Pennsyvania German
religious commune that refused to be reported in the censuses (or pay taxes,
apparently). When asked who her sources were, she said that she had been sworn
to secrecy and threatened with death if she revealed them.
When I asked her dissertation advisor how he could sign off on such a piece of
make-believe, he said it didn't matter because everyone in the field was aware
of the nature of the problem. That may have been the case 20 years ago; it
apparently is not the case now.
Based upon her dissertation (on the Stephenson commune) and her Ohio Valley
Conference article, I would say that she is the Carlos Castaneda of Ohio
archaeology.
James L. Murphy
[log in to unmask]
>
> One other reference is:
>
> Benson, Donna L.
> 1984 The Stephenson pottery works, Pleasant Bottoms (Adams County)
> Ohio:1790-1880. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on Ohio Valley Urban and
> Historic Archeology, Vol. II: 57-65.
>
>
>
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