Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Curator David Riggs and Museum Technician William
Calhoon of the National Park Service’s Colonial National Historical
Park for always making the collection and other research materials available
to me. Also, for generously sharing their thoughts on the collection,
I extend my appreciation to colleagues and fellow ceramics enthusiasts
Beverly Straube, Taft Kiser, Robert Hunter, Michelle Erickson, Richard
Coleman-Smith, and last, but in no way least, Alain Outlaw.
1. John L. Cotter, Archeological Excavations at Jamestown,
Virginia, 2nd ed. (Richmond: Archeological Society of Virginia, 1995),
pp. 68–74. H. Summerfield Day, “Preliminary Archeological Report
of Excavations at Jamestown, Virginia,” 1935, typescript, Colonial
National Historical Park. J. C. Harrington, “Summary of Documentary
Data on the William May-Henry Hartwell Property Preparatory to its Excavation,”
1938, typescript, Colonial National Historical Park. J. C. Harrington,
“Archeological Report: May-Hartwell Site, Jamestown, Excavations
at the May-Hartwell Site in 1935, 1938, and 1939 and Ditch Explorations
east of the May Hartwell Site in 1935 and 1938,” 1940, typescript,
Colonial National Historical Park.
2. Although the potter or potters and place of manufacture
of these vessels have yet to be identified, examples uncovered in Barnstaple
are similarly sgraffito-decorated. Many marly motif parallels have been
recovered from kiln excavations in North Devon. Linda Blanchard, Archaeology
in North Devon 1987–8 (Barnstaple, Eng.: North Devon District
Council, 1989), pp. 16–19. Alison Grant, North Devon Pottery:
The Seventeenth Century (Exeter, Eng.: A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd, 1983),
plates 8–15, 17. C. Malcolm Watkins, “North Devon Pottery and
Its Export to America in the Seventeenth Century,” United States
National Museum Bulletin 225 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing
Office, 1960), p. 20.
3. Michelle Erickson and Robert Hunter, “Dots, Dashes,
and Squiggles: Early English Slipware Technology,” in Ceramics in
America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New
England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001), pp. 98–101.
4. Watkins, “ North Devon Pottery and its Export
to America in the Seventeenth Century.” Grant, North Devon Pottery:
The Seventeenth Century.
5. Port records indicate that only fifteen percent or
less of North Devon’s overseas exports was to America. Grant,
North Devon Pottery: The Seventeenth Century, p. 114.
6. Ibid., pp. 35–46.
7. Ibid., pp. 1–33.
8. Ivor Noël Hume, “First Look at a Lost Virginia
Settlement,” National Geographic Magazine 155, no. 6 (June
1979): 735–37. Ivor and Audrey Noël Hume, The Archaeology
of Martin’s Hundred Part I: Interpretive Studies (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 166–68. Alain Charles
Outlaw, Governor’s Land: Archaeology of Early Seventeenth-Century
Virginia Settlements (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990),
pp. 105–8.
9. Ivor and Audrey Noël Hume, The Archaeology
of Martin’s Hundred Part I: Interpretive Studies, pp. 166–68.
10. Sgraffito decoration of ceramics passed from China,
through the Middle East, and then to Italy in the Middle Ages. From the
sixteenth century on, the technique spread to Switzerland, Germany, France,
and the Low Countries. Double slipping, or the application of a white
slip over a red slip before sgraffito decorating, was used in Northern
Europe. European sgraffito decorated wares are well represented on post-medieval
archaeological sites in southwestern England, therefore serving as prototypes.
In addition, techniques, forms, and designs may have come into southwestern
England by way of refugee Huguenot and Netherlands Protestant artisans,
who may have included potters. Grant, North Devon Pottery: The Seventeenth
Century, p. 2; Leslie B. Grigsby, English Slip-Decorated Earthenware
at Williamsburg (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
1993), p. 19. John G. Hurst, David S. Neal, and H. J. E. Van Beuningen,
“Pottery Produced and Traded in North-West Europe, 1350–1650,”
Rotterdam Papers 6 (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beunigen, 1986),
pp. 30–33. Hans van Gangelen, Peter Kersloot, Sjek Venhuis, Hoorn
des Ouervloeds: De Bloeiperiode van Het Noord-Hollands Slibaardewerk,
Ca. 1580–Ca. 1650 (Stiching Noord-Hollands Slibaardewerk Oosthuizen:
Stichting Uitgeverij Noord-Holland Wormerveer, 1997). Ivor Noël Hume,
If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Household
Pottery (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone
Foundation, 2001), pp. 35–36.
11. Grant, North Devon Pottery: The Seventeenth Century,
pp. 131–34.
12. Ivor and Audrey Noël Hume, The Archaeology
of Martin’s Hundred Part II: Artifact Catalog (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 237–39, 300–303.
Seth Mallios, Archaeological Excavations at 44JC568, The Reverend Richard
Buck Site (Richmond: Association for the Preservation of Virginia
Antiquities, 1999), p. 32.
13. Analysis of the ditch artifacts has always been difficult
because of the lack of excavation field notes, drawings, and photographs.
Because of the presence of glass wine bottle seals bearing the initials
of Henry Hartwell, who patented the land in 1689, the deposit has always
been related to him, thus post-dating 1689. Various explanations include
rebuilding activities during Hartwell’s occupation, discarding out
of date ceramics, a household or shipping accident, and destruction at
the end of Hartwell’s residency in 1695. It is this author’s
opinion, however, that the restorable vessels, including North Devon gravel-tempered
earthenware, North Devon sgraffito slipware, and English delftware, were
broken in shipment to merchant Colonel William White, and the large ceramic
fragments were used as drainage fill for the earlier U-sectioned ditch.
Later, the very fragmentary domestic artifacts, including the “HH”
bottle seals, bone combs, delft tiles, roofing tiles, turned lead, window
glass, and flooring tiles, were discarded. This later material is very
different in character from the large ceramic sherds, and it does suggest
house-remodeling activities. Interestingly, White’s widow married
Hartwell. Harrington, “Summary of Documentary Data on the William
May-Henry Hartwell Property Preparatory to Its Excavation.” Cotter,
Archeological Excavations at Jamestown, Virginia, pp. 68–74.
14. Archaeological parallels demonstrating the use of
ceramic sherds for fill are common. For example, pottery waste was used
as fill for drainage in the “soakaway” trenches and pits at
John Dwight’s late seventeenth-century Fulham pottery near the River
Thames. Chris Green, John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery: Excavations
1971–79 (London: English Heritage, 1999), p. xii. In the early
eighteenth century, stoneware wasters from the Southwark Bankside Kiln
in London were used to line drainage channels and to strengthen the River
Thames’ shoreline. Saggers and wasters from the William Rogers pottery
factory were used to surface roads in Yorktown, Virginia, in the second
quarter of the eighteenth century. Ivor Noël Hume, Here Lies Virginia
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), pp. 221–22. Remarkably, whole
vessels were used to fill a ravine at the Baynham stoneware pottery factory
near Trenton, South Carolina, in the 1880s. Mark M. Newell, “A Spectacular
Find at the Joseph Gregory Baynham Pottery Site,” in Ceramics
in America (2001), ed. Robert Hunter, pp. 229–32.
15. Grant, North Devon Slipware: The Seventeenth Century,
pp. 58–59.
16. Grapes are common motifs on Germanic and Low Countries
slipwares. Anton Bruijn, Spiegelbeelden: Werra-Keramiek uit Einkhuizen
1605 (Zwolle: Stiching Tromotie Archeologie, 1992), pp. 259–62.
van Gangelen, et al., Hoorn des Ouervloeds, figs. 85, 105, 124,
128, 129. Hurst, et al., “Pottery Produced and Traded in North-West
Europe,” pp. 244–45.
17. The use of scalloped medallions to frame the central
motifs was common on German and Low Countries slipware dishes, and emulated
similar decorative devices on Chinese porcelain dishes of the period.
Bruijn, Spiegelbeelden, pp. 64–84. Hurst, et al., “Pottery
Produced and Traded in North-West Europe,” pp. 243–44. C. L.
Van der Pijl-Ketel, ed., The Ceramic Load of the “Witte Leeuw”
1613 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1982), pp. 53–80.
18. Grant, North Devon Slipware: The Seventeenth Century,
p. 59.
19. Martha W. McCartney, James City County: Keystone
of the Commonwealth (James City County, Va.: Donning Company, 1997),
pp. 111–13.
|