1. There are exceptions to every rule. Notable among archaeologists who have become collectors and have shouldered their responsibility to share their archaeological knowledge with the museum-going public was Kenneth J. Barton, one of the founders of the British Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology and a pioneer in the study of common earthenwares of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. K. J. Barton, Catalogue of the Barton Collection of Earthenware Pottery (Guernsey: Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery, 1982). On the other hand, it is possible to pick a random issue of the American Journal of the Society for Historical Archaeology (e.g., 1995) and search in vain for a single ceramic illustration.

2. My first visit to the Chipstone Foundation’s collection showed me that I had been wrong in assuming that by 1810 quality hand-painting on English pearlware was a skill of the past. The collection’s large “William Wotton” pitcher, dated 1821, exhibited painting one would accept as dating around 1790.

3. In reality, strictly archaeological museums are a small minority. Most museums are more eclectic and confine archaeological exhibits to one gallery or department among many.

4. Hedley Swain, “Taking London Archaeology to Londoners,” The London Archaeologist 9, no.1 (Summer 1999): 4.

5. Cited by Frank Herman, The English as Collectors: A Documentary Chrestomathy (London, 1972), p. 47, quoting the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Advisory Council’s “Report of the Sub-Committees upon the Principal Deficiencies in the Collection,” 1913.

6. It seems curious that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London tobacco-pipe makers had their own guild, albeit sharing premises with the curriers, but that potters were unlisted. It seems that their commercial interests were handled through the Glass-sellers’ Company, which met quarterly at the Antwerp Tavern in Bartholomew Lane. Nevertheless, in January 1673/4, while debating the imposition of new import duties to encourage British manufacturing and jobs for the poor, the House of Lords heard from “Mr. King, for the Wardens of the Company of Earthen Wares.” However, it is evident from his testimony that his company was in the business of selling rather than manufacturing. Ninth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, pt. 2 (London: Stationary Office, 1884), p. 32.

7. For the benefit of any ceramic collector who may imagine from all this aesthetic and museo-ethical posturing that archaeology is as abstruse as genomen analysis, let me explain: The art and mystery of digging archaeology rests on a very simple, two-brick foundation. One requires that we take the ground apart layer by layer, the last to go down being the first to come out. The other states that each layer or intrusion into it must be dated by the most recently manufactured pot (or other artifact) found in it. It is as simple as that. But simple or not, if the sequential information is not correctly recorded, any thesis built on it will sooner or later collapse. Care and common sense are an excavator’s primary credentials.

8. R. Coleman-Smith and T. Pearson, Excavations in the Donyatt Potteries (Chichester, Eng.: Phillimore, 1988). Jacqueline Pearce, Border Wares, Post-Medieval Pottery in London 1500–1700, vol. 1 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office for the Museum of London, 1992). Thomas Ward was potting in Martin’s Hundred immediately prior to the 1622 massacre. Ivor and Audrey Noël Hume, The Archaeology of Martin’s Hundred, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). The 1677 Morgan Jones kiln in Westmoreland County, Virginia, was in operation for less than a year. Edward A. Chappell, “Morgan Jones and Dennis White: Country Potters in Seventeenth-century Virginia,” Virginia Cavalcade 24, no. 4 (Spring 1975): 148–155. Chris Green, John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery Excavations 1971–1979 (London: English Heritage, 1999). Norman Barka, et al., The “Poor Potter” of Yorktown: A Study of a Colonial Pottery Factory, 3 vols. (Denver: United States National Park Service, 1984).

9. “Rouen faïence in eighteenth-century America,” Antiques 78, no. 6 (Dec. 1960): 599–561.

10. Although professional archaeologists undertake salvage excavations on Dutch construction sites, many of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century earthenwares and stonewares sold by British antique dealers have come from Amsterdam and other urban contexts. No one is going to applaud this practice on the jingoistic grounds that the protection of Dutch antiquities is somehow less worthy or necessary than saving comparable material from British or U.S. sites; but like animal lovers who become vegetarians in the hope of shaming their carnivorous neighbors, purists who spurn a dealer’s imported pot will quickly be followed by another customer with the necessary thirty pieces of silver—or thereabouts. Indeed, such high-mindedness is likely to result in the loss of information that could otherwise have been analyzed and shared. Ralph Merrifield, The Roman City of London (London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1965), pp. 9–10. Merrifield rightly noted that any such transactions were illegal as any object found on private property belonged to the ground landlord. As a pragmatist (as well as arguably the best archaeo-curator of the second half of the twentieth century), Ralph recognized that “Human nature being what it is, however, in order to collect casual finds on building sites at all, it is usually necessary to come to terms with the finder.” Ibid. Catalogue of the Collection of London Antiquities in the Guildhall Museum, 2nd ed. (London: Corporation of London, 1908), p. viii. In his introduction to the catalogue Edward M. Borrajo observed that “Any doubt as to whether a suffcient number of London antiquities could be brought together to fill the new apartment was dispelled by the many important finds which were soon to crowd the available space to such an extent as to render the adequate display of the objects impossible.” He added that “It is also to be regretted that the exigencies of the design for the new building obliged the architect to place the museum below the street level.” Among many decorative arts curators, the fact that archaeological artifacts come from below ground still makes the basement the best place for them.

11. I am aware that in numismatics the bronze alloy is correctly termed orichalcum, but it seemed pretentious to say so.

12. Ivor Noël Hume, Discoveries in Martin’s Hundred (Williamsburg Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1983), p. 44, fig. 33.

13. The lion passant gardant and the cursive “L” date letter indicate a Chester origin in 1911.

14. “British and Continental Ceramics,” April 20, 2000. London: Christie’s South Kensington, lot 90.

15. Legitimate repairs or replacements are limited to putting back what is known to have been there. A broken rim can be infilled because one still has part of it to copy. The trouble comes when a restorer puts back a spout for which he has no physical evidence or adds a second handle on the grounds that bowls of that type usually had two. Only in the certainty that such bowls always had two would the replacement be justified. In every kind of restoration, be it in pots or palaces, less is best. Rita Susswein Gottesman, ed., The Arts and Crafts in New York 1726–1776 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1938), p. 88; The New-York Journal, January 2, 1772. Through my decades as director of Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeological laboratory, it was my policy to restore broken pottery as skillfully as the artist was able to do, but only on the side visible to the museum-visiting public. The other was left uncolored so that an examiner could immediately see what was original and what was not.

16. Gottesman, The Arts and Crafts in New York, p. 87, citing The New-York Gazette or the Weekly Post-Boy, November 20, 1760.

17. Ibid., p. 86, citing The New-York Journal or General Advertiser, October 12, 1769. Ibid., pp. 86–87, citing The New-York Journal or the General Advertiser, July 6, 1767, and The New-York Gazette, January 31, 1763.

18. Probably because I have a meat-and-potatoes, tavern-table mentality rather than that of a drawing-room, tea table conversationalist.

19. Robert D. Ballard, “How We Found Titanic,” National Geographic 168, no. 6 (December 1985), p. 718.

20. Associated Press, “Titanic seeker forced to abandon ship,” Daily Press, Newport News, Va. June 26, 2000, p. a2. The salvage agreement governing the Titanic project currently forbids the sale of any of the more than five thousand recovered artifacts.

21. The excavation and subsequent research and conservation of the Mary Rose represented the twentieth century’s greatest accomplishment in underwater archaeology.

22. George L. Miller, “The Second Destruction of the Geldermalsen,” The American Neptune 47, no. 4 (Fall 1987).

23. In both spheres one provides context for the other. Building remains are best dated and interpreted by reference to ceramics and other artifacts found in and around them, and shipwrecks similarly are served by their surviving equipment and cargoes. However, buildings and ships were, and remain, picture frames surrounding the life of the past represented by the portable artifacts.

24. Miller, “The Second Destruction of the Geldermalsen,” p. 277. This presupposes that they would first have had the money to mount a nonrefundable, time-consuming fishing expedition in search of the ship. It remains one of archaeology’s best kept secrets that archaeologists are, themselves, the profession’s principal beneficiaries.

25. J. Dyson, “Captain Hatcher’s Richest Find,” Reader’s Digest (October 1986): 144.

26. “The Nanking Cargo,” Christie’s Amsterdam; sale beginning April 28, 1986. George Miller’s employer, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, had invested several thousands of dollars in purchasing examples of the cargo that matched fragments found in Williamsburg excavations. The auction was seen as a unique opportunity for Williamsburg’s curators to acquire the range of common export porcelains appropriate for inclusion in the furnishings of mid-eighteenth-century Virginia homes. It was to denounce this purchase that George Miller “felt it was necessary to speak out concerning the destruction of an important archaeological site and to make an attempt at educating people concerning the ethical and legal questions related to such acquisitions.” Miller, “The Second Destruction of the Geldermalsen,” p. 281. Miller also questioned whether Christie’s deliberately kept the identity of the wreck secret to avoid legal entanglements with the Dutch and/or Indonesian governments (Ibid., p. 279). However, the published sources suggest otherwise. In the introduction to his book, Jörg stated that he was not told of the discovery until December 1985 and that his subsequent research led to his unequivocal identification of the ship as the Geldermalsen, his evidence put forward in his manuscript dated to February 1986. Christie’s catalog was dated as being printed in December 1985, before the ship’s identity was made known.

27. “Divisions Run Deep Over Protecting The Titanic,” The Washington Post, July 5, 2000, p. a19.

28. There can be no denying that one lucrative salvage operation breeds another. In November 2000, Hatcher auctioned 350,000 pieces of porcelain from the Chinese junk Tek Sing, which sank in 1822, thereby providing porcelain students with a hitherto unparalleled opportunity to study wares made for the Oriental rather than the Occidental trade. See Nigel Pickford, “The Legacy of the Tek Sing,” abridged by Robin Ph. Straub, as an overview accompanying “The Treasure of the Tek Sing” exhibition prior to its sale by Nagel Auctions, Frankfurt, Nov. 17–15, 2000.

29. Aesop’s Fables, with their Morals in Prose and Verse Grammatically Translated, 18th ed. (London: J. Phillips and J. Taylor, 1721), p. 61.

30. Professional archaeologists in their polemic against all who improperly disturb the past do not distinguish between land sites and those beneath the oceans. There is, however, a fundamental difference. Save for the desecration of graves by pot hunters and the looting of battlefield sites by curio-hungry collectors, few land sites offer the return for effort or investment characteristic of shipwrecks. Consequently, the recovery of ceramics from dry contexts is invariably the accidental by-product of urban development. In my own experience as a salvage archaeologist I have known building contractors to deliberately cover over or rip out potentially rewarding pits and well shafts rather than face archaeologists standing in the way of construction.