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Preliminary Identification of African-Style Rouletted Colonoware in the Colonial South Carolina Lowcountry
Abstract
Colonoware, a low-fired earthenware made by enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans, is a crucial source for exploring the formation and materialization of colonial identities. Yet, the origins and ethnic associations of this enigmatic colonial potting tradition have long been debated. Recent ethnographic studies of African ceramic traditions have led to our reexamination of a surface treatment lately identified on colonoware vessels in South Carolina. Our analysis focuses on colonoware sherds from two eighteenth-century sites in Charleston as well as an additional unprovenienced vessel from the Horry County Museum. Through experimental replication and cross-regional comparison, this paper argues that the application of “folded strip rouletting” on colonoware in South Carolina is related to contemporaneous decorative techniques practiced in West and northern Central Africa. The sherds analyzed in this article thus represent the first clear published example of a decorative African potting technique identified in the colonial United States.
... The archaeology of the African Diaspora continues to develop both methodologically and theoretically. Methodologically, scholars have applied new and prevailing trends in cutting-edge archaeology to African Diaspora sites, including digital reconstructions (Gonzalez-Tennant and Gonzalez-Tennant 2016), ancient DNA analyses (Schablitsky et al. 2019), and close considerations of material culture (Agbe-Davies 2017; Franklin 2020; Sattes et al. 2020), many of these being comparative studies enabled by the growth of the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) (Galle et al. 2019). In general, the development of African Diaspora archaeology has been characterized by expansion in terms of the types of sites being studied, their geographical location, and who does and is included in research. ...
This article introduces the special issue, “Community Archaeology of the African Diaspora.” This collection of papers grew out of a session at the 2020 Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Boston, Massachusetts, with additional authors invited to add further geographical and methodological diversity. The papers in this issue address a single question—how are archaeologists currently involved with community archaeology projects related to the African Diaspora?—and reflects the wide array of approaches currently being implemented across the discipline.
Colonoware—a low-fired earthenware pottery made by enslaved African and enslaved and free Indigenous potters across the Lowcountry region of South Carolina—is a clear material consequence of colonial-identity formation. This process certainly involved African and Indigenous groups, but it also drew in English, French, and Spanish colonial powers, and the various economic, political, and social networks that bound them together. While scholars have recently offered nuanced and inclusive theoretical frameworks to help situate colonoware production within the process of colonial-identity formation, these studies thus far have lacked analytical methods that operationalize the link between potting practices and colonial-identity formation through the analysis of archaeological data. In this article, we present our attempt to forge the link between practice and data by analyzing a number of attributes that illustrate various choices potters made while constructing vessels. In particular, we are interested in comparing the methods of pottery manufacturing employed by local Indigenous potters in the “Lowcountry” region around Charleston, South Carolina, prior to European colonization to the methods used by resident potters at early colonial settlements in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Three archaeological sites in the South Carolina Sandhills provide insight into the opportunities and challenges associated with the archaeology of rural enslavement. A consideration of the material culture and historical context of these sites raises questions about the National Register of Historic Places’ standards of significance and integrity and their applicability in historical environments of scarcity. By examining sites with quantitatively small assemblages, but large stories to tell, this article explores prospects for expanding the histories curated in the National Register of Historic Places.
This study used data collected using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer to examine ceramic artifacts found during the excavation of historic Brook Green Plantation, in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Excavations at this site yielded culturally significant artifacts associated with African and African American people held in bondage during the 19th century. The geochemical composition of Colonoware and brick artifacts was compared to clay samples that were taken from six locations on the grounds of Brookgreen Gardens. Some Colonoware sherds were found to be consistent with a clay source close to the excavation site. This research is part of a larger goal to demonstrate the applicability of portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry in the analysis and interpretation of archaeological ceramics.
This section draws upon information from ethnographic examples of roulette fabrication and usage in sub-saharan Africa, to set the initial foundations of a systematic classificatory framework for these tools. The simple and elegant framework adopted here for the categorisation of roulettes is articulated around three key characteristics: the material of which the roulette is made (wood, stip, cord, etc.), the manipulation operated on it (twisting knotting, wrapping, etc.), and finally the manner in which it is applied to the body of the vessel (rolled, single-impressed, rocked, etc.). A distinction is made between simple roulettes, roulettes on a core (be it "continuous" or "independent"), roulettes made from modified materials, and finally unmodified objects used as roulettes. Examples drawn from recent fieldwork and from museum collections are illustrated here with their impressions.
African Pottery Roulette Past and Present: Techniques, Identification and Distribution considers ethnographic, museological and archaeological approaches to pottery-decorating tools called roulettes, that is to say short lengths of fibre or wood that are rolled over the surface of a vessel for decoration. This book sets out, for the first time, a solid typology for the classification of African pottery decorated with such tools, and forges a consensus on common methodology and standards. It gives an overview of history of research into roulette decoration in Africa and elsewhere Jomon Japan, Neolithic Europe, Siberia, and New York among others; outlines the contemporary distribution of roulette usage in sub-Saharan Africa today, a "success story" from Senegal to Tanzania; and proposes methodologies for the identification of selected roulette decoration types in the archaeological record. By achieving standardisation in pottery analysis, this book will help researchers make meaningful comparisons between different sites of West Africa, and thus guide further research on the West African past. As roulette decoration has been such a global phenomenon in the past, the book will also be of interest to all researchers with an interest in ceramics from different parts of the world.
The question of links between material cultural and sociocultural meaning remains a challenge in archaeology. In this book, Anne Mayor proposes a tool for archaeological interpretation in the area of ceramic studies, capable of addressing questions of ethnolinguistic identity and the settlement history in the Niger Bend, West Africa. Three approaches have been employed:
- Ethnoarchaeological: The study of modern variability in pottery enables the selection of relevant descriptive criteria.
- Historical: The synthesis of available data clarifies the historical depth of ethnic groups and the processes responsible for their formation.
- Archaeological: The analysis of excavation data indicates the spatiotemporal distribution of ceramic traditions.
The correlation of synchronic and diachronic data enables her to construct a model for the development of ceramic traditions over the last two millennia, in relation to ethnolinguistic units. Application to the excavation of Dangandouloun (Dogon Country, 7th-12th centuries AD) demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach in the interpretation of regional protohistoric sites, and initiates a new approach to the study of the history of techniques and human settlement.
While anthropologists and historians have clearly underlined the dynamics of human groups, ethnoarchaeologists have emphasized the stability of modes of transmission of technical knowledge within ethno- linguistic groups. Overcoming this apparent opposition by mobilizing and confronting lines of evidence from three distinct disciplines — ethnoar- chaeology, ethnohistory, and archaeology— allows me to tackle the material expression of social identities in the past. Time depth, however, coarsens the resolution of interpretation, necessitating a shift in focus from the ethnic group to the linguistic family. Research I conducted with the Swiss MAESAO team since 1988 in central Mali provides a strong case study for understanding the complex links between ethnicity and ceramics. I propose a model of interpretation of archaeological ceramics that takes into account population dynamics.
The individual craftsperson is often lost in the broad patterns of normative analysis. Recent South Carolina research has attempted to refocus on the individual and how that individual interacts within and between communities. The technological and stylistic analysis of slave-made pottery from three contemporaneous, 19th-century slave settlements in Beaufort County, South Carolina, was aimed at recognizing individual potters. Suspected potter-level idiosyncracies allowed for the modeling of five potters, or one to two potters per community. The results also suggest that no ceramic exchange occurred between the slave rows, even though they were all in proximity and two were elements of a single plantation. The findings have implications for understanding the use context of late Colonoware, and for delineating potter-topotter variation within the well-entrenched tradition.
Not long ago, our “historical” narratives concerning seventeenth- and eighteenth-century southeastern Indian communities read like colonial maps with neatly depicted “Tribal” territories and towns. Like those maps, the narratives presented a timeless “history” for groups whose identities were rooted to specific locations. This chapter traces a shift in our perspective as we have grown to appreciate the mutability and fluidity of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century colonial landscape. I explore artifact data from a number of sites to identify material traces of the social “reshuffling” that unfolded during this period—a process materialized as "improvised" diaspora communities.
During the 1920s and 1930s, anthropologists and folklorists became obsessed with uncovering connections between African Americans and their African roots. At the same time, popular print media and artistic productions tapped the new appeal of black folk life, highlighting African-styled voodoo as an essential element of black folk culture. A number of researchers converged on one site in particular, Sapelo Island, Georgia, to seek support for their theories about “African survivals,” bringing with them a curious mix of both influences. The legacy of that body of research is the area’s contemporary identification as a Gullah community. This wide-ranging history upends a long tradition of scrutinizing the Low Country blacks of Sapelo Island by refocusing the observational lens on those who studied them. Cooper uses a wide variety of sources to unmask the connections between the rise of the social sciences, the voodoo craze during the interwar years, the black studies movement, and black land loss and land struggles in coastal black communities in the Low Country. What emerges is a fascinating examination of Gullah people's heritage, and how it was reimagined and transformed to serve vastly divergent ends over the decades.
Beginning in the 1670s, enslaved Africans’ knowledge, technologies, and labour made the rice plantations of the South Carolina ‘Lowcountry’ incredibly rich. As a result, the transplanted West African ‘rice culture,’ underwent a fascinating creolization process. By examining the creolization of material technologies, especially Lowcountry baskets, this paper challenges Sidney Mintz’ assertion that creolization is completed by the first generation in slave colonies. Instead, creolization extends through time, driven by both disruption and continuity. Both the immediate disruption of enslavement and the ongoing disruptions of shifting economic imperatives—of African subsistence agriculture, the plantation economy, and post emancipation subsistence—drive creolization. Geographic similarities between West Africa and the Lowcountry and the autonomy achieved in provision grounds and the slave-domestic provided continuity. Exemplary of this process, contemporary Lowcountry basket sewing, creolized through the disruptions of slavery and preserved in the slave-domestic, grants practitioners a means of communication with their history and ancestors.
Gullah-Geechee is a creole culture that emerged among enslaved African Americans in the coastal Southeastern United States. Modern material expressions of this culture include a distinctive settlement type, the family compound, consisting of loosely clustered residences and outbuildings. The arrangement of these settlements resembles colonial slave quarters but differs from antebellum “slave rows.” Gullah-Geechee family compounds existed by the mid-20th century, but their origin, time depth, and evolution from linear quarters are unclear. Archaeological study of the Wilson–Miller plantation slave quarter near Savannah, occupied over most of the 19th Century, indicated that the Gullah-Geechee residential compound appeared soon after Emancipation. The study also suggested that communal outdoor space was important in maintaining cultural practices that were expressed in both colonial and post-Emancipation settlement patterns.
The trope of “tradition” dominates archaeological studies of the African diaspora. Much of the information archaeologists have about traditions on the African continent or in the early diaspora comes from historical documents and from ethnography. Here, the author argues that pragmatism provides a model for analysis that allows archaeology a degree of independence from these allied datasets. Archaeologists, like other social scientists, confront the problem of the relative importance of social learning (i.e., tradition) vs. structure as forces shaping cultural expression in the African diaspora. An analytical strategy inspired by pragmatism is here applied to beads recovered from Tidewater Chesapeake slave quarters occupied in the 18th and early 19th centuries in order to demonstrate that tradition is only part of the story
Markets were integral to the development of Charleston’s urban landscape, and the interaction between African Americans and market spaces shaped Charleston. The archaeology of the South Carolina low country highlights African Americans’ role in Charleston’s market economy and the significance of this economy in forging an African American cultural identity, the Gullah. The linkage between markets and African American space in Charleston persists, and these connections indicate that markets and the market economy have deep-seated meanings to the Gullah.
The low fired earthenwares of eighteenth and nineteenth century Charleston and San Juan are associated with African Americans and display a syncretic blend of technological and stylistic traditions from West Africa, Europe and the New World. The cultural contexts of their manufacture, distribution and use relate to processes in which African American cultures developed in the New World, built upon a foundation of continuities with a shared if fragmentary African heritage, and framed with adaptations meant to cope with the oppressive conditions of poverty and racial oppression. The examination of colono and criollo ware pottery provides an opportunity to explore the complex struggle for control of African American culture as it was played out on two very different urban stages. The form, style, internal structure, and chemical composition of this pottery is examined. In South Carolina these vessels were part of a complex craft ways tradition in which many African American potters worked using a wide variety of methods. The makers of criollo wares in Puerto Rico, who may have enjoyed greater freedom than their counterparts in South Carolina, followed somewhat more standardized techniques. The elemental composition of this pottery, studied through neutron activation analysis, suggests that both of these traditions were made on many locations and were exchanged through regional trade networks. In both South Carolina and Puerto Rico there was a close association between the user of these earthenwares and African traditions in food ways, and domestic architecture. Changes in domestic technology during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as changes in European American attitudes towards African American material culture eroded the domestic context of which these vessels were a part. Although this pottery may have evoked strong associations with African traditions of hearth and home, especially for enslaved people in South Carolina, both traditions disappeared in the nineteenth century.
Mangrove rice farming on West Africa's Rice Coast was the mirror image of tidewater rice plantations worked by enslaved Africans in 18th-century South Carolina and Georgia. This book reconstructs the development of rice-growing technology among the Baga and Nalu of coastal Guinea, beginning more than a millennium before the transatlantic slave trade. It reveals a picture of dynamic pre-colonial coastal societies, quite unlike the static, homogenous pre-modern Africa of previous scholarship. From its examination of inheritance, innovation, and borrowing, Deep Roots fashions a theory of cultural change that encompasses the diversity of communities, cultures, and forms of expression in Africa and the African diaspora.
The Bamana state of Segou (c.1700-1861) has been used as an exemplar of the slave system of economic production amongst Sahelian states by anthropologists and historians such as Bazin (1974), Roberts (1987), and Meillassoux (1991). However, little is known about the nature of Segou's connection to broader slave-trading networks of the time or, from an archaeological perspective, how such slave systems of production may be viewed in terms of settlement types or patterns. This chapter addresses aspects of these two puzzles through the field research of Project Segou, a collaboration between University College London and the Malian Institut des Sciences Humaines. It concentrates on results from the 2006 season directed by the authors - fieldwork which focused on the nature and history of Segou's slave economy. The chapter summarizes findings on the functioning of the Segovian slave system of production, and then briefly considers two case studies: one concerning Segou's first major war of enslavement, and a second examining two of Segou's enigmatic Sifinso (or 'schools of the black hair'), places which may have played an important role in the mental conditioning of select groups of new captives.
Lowcountry Georgia was the birthplace for the archaeological study of African American life that has now blossomed into the research field known as archaeology of the African diaspora. Although it was not the site of the earliest archaeological study of people of African descent, the research conducted by Charles Fairbanks, an archaeologist, and Robert Ascher, a cultural anthropologist, at Rayfield Plantation on Cumberland Island in 1969 set the stage for the study of slavery and plantation life as the interdisciplinary pursuit practiced today.1 Their precedent-setting study combined descriptive accounts obtained from a variety of written sources - slave narratives, travelers' accounts, and public records - with archaeological findings to piece together slave life within the quarters. While some of their assumptions and interpretations may be considered naïve compared to our present-day understanding of slavery, Ascher and Fairbanks demonstrated the potential of archaeology to provide a new and different perspective on slavery and African American life. They chose to examine slavery during the well-documented antebellum period (1830-60) of American history as they rejected the idea that writing was superior to other sources in providing information on past human activities. Because most enslaved men and women were unable to write about their lives, Ascher and Fairbanks reasoned that archaeology could shed some light on aspects of slave life that written records authored by whites could not.2 This argument, elaborated on by later generations of archaeologists, became the chief rationale for future archaeological investigations of slavery. © 2010 by the University of Georgia Press. All rights reserved.
African Americans were integral to the stoneware-manufacturing district that developed around Edgefield, South Carolina. Enslaved African Americans worked as potters at several of the Edgefield shops, and the most renowned potter of the district was an enslaved African American named Dave, who incorporated poetic verse onto some of the pottery he made, as well as other marks including an X and slashes. A cross mark was also associated with two of the potteries in the district where Dave had once worked: the Rev. John Landrum Pottery, and the subsequent operation of this pottery by Rev. Landrum's son, Benjamin Franklin Landrum. This cross-in-circle mark, known as the Landrum cross, resembles the African Bakongo cosmogram dikenga. The Landrum cross, as well as Dave's use of the X and slashes, may be representations of African symbols brought to the New World and found archaeologically in other settings and contexts. This paper looks at the African American presence in Edgefield, Landrum crosses, and Dave's use of the cross mark, to examine the meaning of these marks and their potential expression of African American identity.
The archaeology of slave settlements is a recent development within historical archaeology but has gained substantial headway during the last few years. Most of the excavations have been in coastal areas of the Southeastern United States, principally in Georgia and South Carolina. Substantive questions about housing, diet, and lifestyle have been examined. Some comparison between planters, overseers, and slaves has been attempted. Until now little of urban Black settlements or piedmont slave settlements have been investigated.
Although the various techniques used in ceramic production are obvious to those who work with clay professionally, they are not always recognized by archaeologists. A surface decoration commonly found on Greek and Roman fine wares, including Attic and Campanian Black Gloss, Thin-Walled Ware, Eastern Sigillata, Italian Sigillata, African Red Slip Ware, and Vesuvian Sigillata, is usually called rouletting, but I argue that in most cases the pattern is achieved by another technique known as chattering. Although some archaeologists are aware of the difference between the two procedures, there is ongoing confusion in the identification and use of these terms. This note discusses both decorative methods in an attempt to identify the diagnostic features that may help archaeologists differentiate between the two.
Archaeological investigations were carried out during May 2010 within Behavior Cemetery, a historic African American graveyard used for more than 120 years by the Gullah-Geechee communities of Sapelo Island, Georgia. Designed in close partnership with the local residents, this project sought to address their concerns about disturbance to unmarked graves when new graves were dug. This paper provides a historical overview of the cemetery and then discusses the methods, results, and outcomes of the field research. The success of the Behavior Cemetery Project serves as a positive example of community-oriented archaeology, a mutually beneficial partnership that simultaneously serves public, academic research, and cultural resource management needs.
Customarily, studies of urbanization in early British America have concentrated on its northern mainland seaports. This article moves beyond a thirteen colonies perspective to define and explore a Greater Caribbean urban world, with Charleston, South Carolina, at its most northerly point. In particular, the authors’ comparison of the internal dynamic of Charleston and Kingston, Jamaica, reveals an urban world that was no more dominated by the demands of the plantation sector than the northern seaports were beholden to their agricultural interiors. Significantly, however, these rich internal urban economies relied on, and were profoundly shaped by, the institution of slavery. In light of these findings, the authors thus characterize this Greater Caribbean urban zone as constituting one strand of urbanization in a larger British Atlantic world that experienced an overall expansion and diversification of the urban form across the early modern period. Most specifically, Charleston and Kingston achieved a growth rate and an economic complexity comparable to other English-speaking towns through their embrace of enslaved people and their labor.
As the landscape of coastal South Carolina changes due to development and tourism, important heritage and archaeology sites, including family cemeteries, fishing grounds, stores, churches, schools, and houses, face destruction. Archaeologists conducting research on Lowcountry sites in the state have generally considered their work to be on slave society in general, rather than on African or African-American peoples creating a cultural identity, a Gullah identity. We propose that archaeologists recognize the connection between the Gullah people and the sites researchers investigate. We provide a case study and primary sources to illustrate the impacts of inequality, race, and racism in the ways sites are valued, deemed significant, and interpreted. This study seeks to complicate previous historical narratives about the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Charles Fairbanks advanced the field of plantation archaeology in 1968 in his pioneering excavation in the cabins of enslaved laborers at Kingsley Plantation, Florida, with a focus on identifying "Africanisms." Failing to recognize elements of African cultures, Fairbanks and his students moved to St. Simons Island, the Couper Plantation and Cannon's Point site, and focused instead upon socio-economic status patterns. Other archaeologists would later make the case for material evidence of African cultural retentions at sites in the United States. Using new interpretative frameworks, a reanalysis of the archaeological materials recovered in the Couper Plantation excavations in the 1970s reveals elements of possible African spirituality not originally identified.
Multisited ethnography was advanced by George Marcus (1995) as a way to address the spatial reach of communities linked by global flows of commodities, peoples, and institutions. Although the approach is usually applied within the context of modern globalization, many of the processes that define globalization accelerated with the onset of European colonization in the 1400s C.E. Multisited research is particularly suited to the analysis of the “paradox of globalization,” the simultaneous unfolding of heterogeneity and homogeneity throughout the world, which became pervasive in the colonial era. An indigenous ceramic type in eastern North America known as colonoware expresses this paradox, where variable European influence in its morphology and surface treatment can be attributed to the intersection of local practices and large‐scale population movements. [ colonoware, globalization, colonialism ]
HERSKOVITS, Melville Jean, prof, anthropology; b. Bellefontaine, O., Sept. ro, 1895; s. Herman and Henrietta (Hart) H.; Ph. B. U. of Chicago, 1920; A. M., Columbia, 1921, Ph. D., 1923; m. Frances S. Shapiro, July 12, 1924-, 1 dau. Jean Frances. Fellow in anthropology, Board of Biol. Sciences, Nat. Research Council, 1923-26; lecturer in anthropology. Columbia, 1924-27, Howard U., 1925; asst. prof. anthropology, Northwestern U. 1921-30, asso. prof., 1931-35, prof. since 1935-, director Program of African Studies since 1951, honorary professor anthropology, Fac. de Filosofía, Bahia, Brazil; Guggenheim Memorial fellow, 1937-38; field research in Dutch Guiana, 1928-29, W. Africa, 1931, Haiti, 1934 Trinidad, 1939 Brazil, 1941-42, Sub-Saharan, Africa, 1953, 57; visiting prof. grad sch. U. I11., 1948-49. Chmn. com. on African anthropol.; chairman com. on international relations in anthropology, div. anthropology and psychology, National Research Council, 1942-50-, chmn. com. Negro studies, Am. Council Learned Socs., 1939-50. Mem. permanent council, Internat. Anthrop. Congress-, v. p., member exec. com. Internat. Union Anthropol. and Ethnol. Scis. Decorated officer Order of Honor and Merit, Haiti, officer order of Orange-Nassau, The Netherlands, Honorary fellow Royal Netherlands Geog. Assn. Royal Anthrop. Inst; fellow National Academy of Sciences, A.A.A.S. (vice president 1934), Soc. Research Child Development, Am. Anthrop. Assn. (pres. Central sect. 1939, exec. bd. 1947-, editor of The American Anthropologist, 1949-52); African Studies Association president 1957-58); member Am. Assn. Phys. Anthropologists, Am. Folklore Soc. (pres. 1945), Société des Africanistes de Paris, International African Institute (exec. council), Council on Foreign Relations, Club: University (Evanston, Illinois). Author: The American Negro, A Study in Racial Crossing, 1928; Anthropometry of the American Negro, 1930; Outline of Dahomean Religious Belief (with Frances S. Herskovits). 1933; Rebel Destiny, Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana (with same), 1934; Suriname Folklore (with same) 1936; Life in a Haitian Valley, 1937; Dahomey, 1938; Acculturation, 1938; The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples, 1940-, The Myth of the Negro Past, 1941; Trinidad Village (with Frances S. Herskovits), 1947; Man and His Works, 1948; Economic Anthropology, 1952-, Franz Boos, The Science of Man in the Making, 1953) Cultural Anthropology, 1955; Dahomean Narrative, a Cross Cultural Analysis (with Frances S. Herskovits), 1958. Homer 810 Clinton PL, Evanston, I11.
Scholars of the Atlantic slave trade have not systematically addressed the question of what material objects or personal belongings captive Africans took aboard the slave ships and what goods they may have acquired on the Middle Passage. This topic has implications for the archaeology of African descendant sites in the New World and the transmission of African material culture. This paper reviews the evidence for clothing, metal, bead, and other jewelry, amulets, tobacco pipes, musical instruments, and gaming materials. In so doing, the paper provides an empirical foundation for the severe limitations placed upon enslaved Africans in transporting their material culture to the New World.