Sansevere, Keri

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TETDEDXSansevere-temple-0225E- ...

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Genre

Thesis/Dissertation

Date

2019

Author

Sansevere, Keri

Advisor

Farnsworth, Paul, 1958-

Committee member

Hansell, Patricia
Bruggeman, Seth C., 1975-
Veit, Richard F., 1968-

Department

Anthropology

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/3505

Abstract

The study of historic-period pottery cuts across many disciplines (e.g., historical archaeology, material culture studies, American studies, art history, decorative arts, fine arts). Studies of historic pottery with provenience from the United States are largely centered on fine-bodied wares, such as porcelain, white salt-glazed stoneware, creamware, pearlware, whiteware, ironstone (or white granite), and kaolin smoking pipes. These wares share the common attribute of whiteness: white paste and painted, slipped, or printed decoration that typically incorporate the color white into its motif. Disenfranchised groups had limited direct-market access to these wares due to its high value (Miller 1980, 1991). White pottery was disproportionately consumed by White people until the nineteenth century. This dissertation examines colonoware—an earth-toned, non-white, polythetic kind of coarse earthenware. Archaeologists commonly encounter colonoware in plantation contexts and believe that colonoware was crafted by Native American, African, and African American potters between the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries (Deetz 1999; Espenshade and Kennedy 2002:210; Gerth and Kingsley 2014; Heite 2002; Madsen 2005:107). Colonoware researchers have engaged with collections and archaeologically excavated samples from the lower Middle Atlantic, American Southeast and Caribbean for over fifty years since the “discovery” of the pottery at Colonial Williamsburg—then called “Colono-Indian Ware”—by Ivor Noël Hume (1962). Comparatively less research has been conducted on colonoware with American Northeast provenience (see Catts 1988; Sansevere 2017). This dissertation “excavates” evidence of Northeastern colonoware that has been deeply buried—buried within obscure literature, buried by centuries of soil accrual only recently moved by compliance archaeology, and buried by the fifty-something-year-old myth that colonoware was only manufactured and used in the lower Middle Atlantic, American Southeast and Caribbean. The lives of northern bondsmen have been largely concealed in the historical record, yet these individuals were clearly a very visible part of northern society and the examination of northern colonoware helps tell that story. The circumstances that precipitated the excavation of northern sites that contain colonoware, the individuals who chose to collect northern colonoware, and my own experience accessing northern colonoware collections shapes how knowledge of the past is made, provides perspective on the mechanisms that control access to heritage, demonstrates how bias is created in object-based research, and reveals the politics at play. Lastly, I speculate that colonoware contained significant meaning for northern users between the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries and discuss the changing value of this non-white pottery in contemporaneous society.

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Theses and Dissertations

"Anything but White": Excavating the Story of Northeastern Colonoware