Colonoware (1670 to early 1900s) – a locally produced low-fired, unglazed earthenware. South Carolina wares are attributed to free and enslaved African and Native American potters. Tempers identified in SC Colonoware are sand, grog, shell, and plants. Predominately undecorated bowls and jars, but other vessel forms and surface treatments have been identified. Surface treatments include smoothed, burnished, scraped, incised, punctate, cord marked, stamped, and roulette.

Material – Earthenware

Place of Origin – Colonial sites in Atlantic North America, Caribbean, and South America

A low-fired earthenware tradition produced by African and Native American peoples in colonial contexts between the 16th and early 20th centuries. These locally-produced wares have been found on colonial sites in the Atlantic North America, Caribbean, and South America and show a range of variations in manufacturing techniques, vessel forms, and surface treatments based on potting and cultural traditions, regional historical developments, and local cultural interactions and exchange. These wares were exchanged locally and were used for secular, medicinal, and spiritual purposes. Rural and urban archaeological sites in the Lowcountry associated with enslaved Africans have produced large amounts of Colonoware which has been a useful tool for us to learn about the lives of the enslaved.

These wares are a product of colonial interactions and reflect the influences of the people that they were produced by and for, for this reason we see a great deal of variation from region to region. The following attributes have been identified on vessels found in the Charleston Lowcountry area. Bowls and jars are the most common vessel forms.[i] Additional identified vessel forms include tobacco pipe, teapot, griddle, mortar, figurine, candlestick holder, and spindle whorl. Tempers include sand, grog, and shell. On wares found in contexts associated with enslaved Africans the vessels are often not fired at high enough temperatures to have fully burned the shell temper and it is still visible in the paste rather than as voids. The surfaces of the vessels range between smoothed and burnished. The majority of vessels are undecorated but other surface treatments have been identified including scraped, incised, punctate, cord marked, stamped, and roulette.[ii] Rouletting is a distinct African decorative technique.[iii] Its occurrence on local Colonoware vessels reflects the continuation of traditional African potting techniques and its influence in local craft production. Elements of African potting traditions are evident in other local ceramic industries that used enslaved labor, like Edgefield stoneware, reflecting the continuation and importance of their potting knowledge, skill, and symbolic marks.[iv]

The recovery of Colonoware vessels associated with the c.1670s Charles Towne settlement are among the earliest examples recovered in South Carolina contexts and provide the earliest known evidence of enslaved African laborers in the colony. Colonoware vessels are the most abundant ceramic type recovered from an impermanent structure in the town commons at c.1670s Charles Towne (60% of all ceramics). This wooden cratchet-style building was used by enslaved Africans and indentured servants while tending to crops and livestock in the town commons, or public lands.[v] A Colonoware tobacco pipe recovered from the cratchet-style building has a distinct African form, helping provide a material link to the enslaved Africans that labored in the early colony.[vi] Colonoware vessels have also been recovered from c.1670-1690s archaeological contexts associated with the town lots (48% of all ceramics). Contact period Native American varieties are currently absent from the assemblage at the Charles Towne settlement.

Another early assemblage of Colonoware has been recovered at St. Giles Kussoe, the First Earle of Shaftesbury’s c.1674-1685 private 12,000-acre plantation on the Ashley River, that includes wares influenced by both Native American and African potting traditions (41% of all artifacts).[vii] The presence of Colonowares (n=63) in the early market contexts (c.1692-1739) at the Charleston Beef Market and the continuities seen in comparison to assemblages recovered on urban town lots provides evidence that enslaved Africans marketed their wares in the urban markets in downtown Charleston for use in the urban households, a tradition that continued on urban sites into the 19th century.[viii] These early Colonoware assemblages help us learn more about the beginnings of a long local potting tradition that continued in the Lowcountry until the early 1900s. The latest known evidence of local Charleston area Colonoware production and use are from c.1890-1900 archaeological contexts at Dean Hall Plantation, located in Berkeley County.[ix]

[i] Leland Ferguson and Kelly Goldberg, ”From the Earth: Spirituality, Medicine Vessels, and Consecrated Bowls as Responses to Slavery in the South Carolina Lowcountry,” Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology & Heritage (2019):5. https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1690843

[ii] Andrew Agha, Nicole Isenbarger, and Charles F. Phillips, “Traditions in Rice and Clay: Understanding an eighteenth-nineteenth century rice plantation, Dean Hall Plantation (38BK2132), Berkeley County, South Carolina.” (Brockington and Associates, Charleston, SC, 2012), 597-608; Ferguson and Goldberg, “From the Earth”, 18; Nicole Isenbarger, “Analysis of Colonoware in the Eighteenth Century Deposits” In Excavations at 14 Legare Street, Charleston, South Carolina (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2001), 8-14-8-25; Nicole Isenbarger, “Potters, Hucksters, and Consumers: Placing Colonoware with the Internal Slave Economy Framework” (Master’s thesis, University of South Carolina, 2006), 83-123; Nicole Isenbarger and Andrew Agha, “Traditions and Tasks: Household Production and the Internal Economy at Dean Hall Plantation, South Carolina” In Beyond the Walls: New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Historical Households, edited by Kevin Fogle, James Nyman, and Mary Beaudry (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 2015), 161-187; Jon Bernard Marcoux, “Documenting Southeastern Indian Coalescence during the early Carolina Indian Trade Period (ca.1670-1715)”, paper presented at Connecting Continents: Archaeological Perspectives on Slavery, Trade, and Colonialism joint conference of the Society for American Archaeology and the European Association for Archaeologists (November 2015, Curacao); Corey A.H. Sattes, Jon Marcoux, Sarah E. Platt, Martha Zierden, and Ronald W. Anthony, “Preliminary Identification of African-Style Rouletted Colonoware in the Colonial South Carolina Lowcountry”, Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 9(2):1-36; Corey A.H.Sattes and Sarah E. Platt, “Rouletted Colonoware: African-Style Pottery in Charleston, South Carolina.” The SAA Archaeological Record (May 2020), 36-39.

[iii] Agha et. al. “Traditions in Rice and Clay”, 597; Olivier P. Gosselain, “Materializing Identities: An African Perspective” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7:187-217; Haour et. al., African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present: Techniques, Identification, and Distribution, (Oxbow Books, Oxbow, UK, 2016); Robert Soper, “Roulette Decoration on African Pottery: Technical Considerations, Dating and Distributions” African Archaeological Review 3:29-51.

[iv] Andrew Agha and Nicole Isenbarger, “Recently Discovered Marked Colonoware from Dean Hall Plantation, Berkeley County, South Carolina” Historical Archaeology 45(2):184-187; J.W. Joseph, “’All of Cross’-African Potters, Marks, and Meanings of Folk Pottery in Edgefield District, South Carolina” Historical Archaeology 45(2):134-155; J.W. Joseph, Crosses, Crescents, Slashes, Stars: African-American Potters and Edgefield District Pottery Marks. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 6(2):110-132; JW Joseph and Nicole Isenbarger, Marks in Common: Current Research on African American Marks on Colonoware and Edgefield Stoneware. South Carolina Antiquities 43:80-81.

[v] Andrew Agha, “Shaftesbury’s Atlantis”, (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 2020), 225-230.

[vi] Paul Gebauer, Cameroon Tobacco Pipes, African Arts 5(2):28-35; Susan Keech McIntosh, Daphne Gallagher and Roderick J. McIntosh, Tobacco Pipes from Excavations at the Museum Site, Jenne, Mali, Journal of African Archaeology 1(2):171-199; John Edward Philips, African Smoking Pipes, The Journal of African History 24(3)303-319; Thurstan Shaw, Early Smoking Pipes: In Africa, Europe, and America, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 90(2):272-305; William A. Turnbaugh, Native North American Smoking Pipes; Archaeology 33(1):15-22.

[vii] Agha, “Shaftesbury’s Atlantis”, 230-243; Nicole Isenbarger, “An Analysis of the Colono Wares at the Lord Ashley Settlement”, In St. Giles Kussoe and “The Character of a Loyal States-man”: Historical Archaeology at Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper’s Carolina Plantation (Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, SC, 2012), 71-82.

[viii] Nicole Isenbarger, “Analysis of the Beef Market Colonoware”, In Archaeology at City Hall: Charleston’s Colonial Beef Market (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2005),85-87. Isenbarger, “Potters, Hucksters, and Consumers”, 83-131.

[ix] Agha et. al., “Traditions in Rice and Clay”, 596-597; Isenbarger and Agha, “Traditions and Tasks”, 166.