To Paul Courtney and List:
 
Re: Starred costrels as illustrated in Noel Hume's MARTIN'S HUNDRED
p.52 #3-12 and Hurst's POTTERY PRODUCED AND TRADED IN NORTH-WEST
EUROPE pp.63-64 #28.75
 
Thought about you the other week, Paul. Was in that dead flat part of
Belgie and realized you really can see those horrible McDonald's signs
from 30 miles away....
 
I missed the costrel in Bruges... the Gruuthuse or the Archaeological?
And any idea where in Iceland? Could it have been a little further
over, at the Basque whaling station on Red Bay? They have something
close, but not quite.
 
Thanks for the SW England refs, I've got Castle St. but not Woolster
or Stephens. As you say, Plymouth UK is very close to Virginia-- John
Allan's Kitto group (Gaimster & Redknap eds., EVERYDAY AND EXOTIC
POTTERY FROM EUROPE) could pass for one of ours.
 
John Hurst is still keeping a list, but feels it might not be
up-to-date on the recent finds. As you say, that's hard work, and I
was hoping to do a bit of it from the comfort of my desk chair. Was
also hoping to flush out some costrels from further up the American
coast, i.e. Plymouth Mass. came on in 1620 and really should have
them.
 
What little we know at the moment is just too strange. They're
apparently Iberian (although not Seville, Hurst had the BM run a sherd
through NAA and it didn't match), but have not been identified over
there or in the Spanish American colonies. And as you say, some in the
UK, and maybe a scattering elsewhere in north-west Europe. In America
I only know of them in the Chesapeake; one fragment at St. Mary's
Maryland, and then on practically all of our excavated 1620-1640
Virginia sites.
 
We're just down the bay from St. Mary's, so the disparity in numbers
sounds like a fairly small, exclusive trade. Perhaps an English
merchant dealing primarily with Virginia, who's getting them from some
currently unknown pottery and sending them along with his barrels
of... probably wine. I called them "disposable"  bottles because we
often find them in restorable condition, implying they were tossed
whole. My favorite pair were found sitting together in the fort ditch
at Suffolk's Harborview site (44SK192).
 
The biggest hole in this "single merchant" idea is that I don't know
what's been found north of Virginia. Starred costrels are not in
Wilcoxen's DUTCH TRADE AND CERAMICS IN AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY or Faulkner & Faulkner's THE FRENCH AT PENTAGOET 1635-1674.
(Incidentally, Paul, if you don't have PENTAGOET it's the best
American 17th report to my knowledge and only about L14. In print, and
they have North Devon pots.) Beyond these two books, I'm embarrassed
to admit that in my mind there's a lot of blank 17th c. ground between
Virginia and Pentagoet. Can someone help me out?
 
By the way, we do have Martincamp in the Chesapeake.
 
Taft Kiser
[log in to unmask]
 
 
 
From: LeicPC <[log in to unmask]>
 
I think you will find there is a scattering of these costrels across
NW Europe and not just England (and Wales). I am pretty sure I
remember seeing one in Bruges Museum last year and Iceland rings a
bell (but my memory for pots is not the best). Unless John Hurst has
a list-  it will be hard work compiling a list especially as so much
material from the major European ports is unpublished.
 
They are not very common (even in SW England with its strong Iberian
trade connections), Certainly, they are rare compared to Martincamp
flasks from Normandy which were imported into England as empty vessels
from Rouen and Dieppe. The biggest group of starred costrels I know is
41 sherds from Castle St, the communal town dump of Plymouth. You
should have a look at John Allan's piece (pp14-23) on Spanish imports
at Plymouth in the Waterfront site. He notes the large amount of C17
Spanish wares at plymouth compared to other SW English ports and
suggests the triangular trade between the Newfoundland fisheries,
Plymouth and western Iberia where the fish was bartered may have been
significant. Presumably the Plymouth link is the key to their
Virginian concentration. Colonists were presumably taking these
vessels with them from Plymouth or they were being shipped out from
there to the colonists in supply or trade vessels.
 
Refs
C. Gaskell Brown (ed), Plymouth Excavations, Castle Street: the
Pottery, Plymouth 1979
C. Gaskell Brown (ed), Plymouth Excavations, The Medieval Waterfront
and Woolster Street: the Pottery, Plymouth 1986.
W.B. Stephens, 'The West-Country ports and the struggle for the
Newfoundland fisheries in the early 17th century', Report of the
Transactions of the Devon Association 88 (1956), 90-101.
 
Regards all, Paul Courtney, Leicester