Thread by @Lindsay_Bloch

@MuseumLiverpool 1/13
The coarse earthenware pottery made in Liverpool during 18th C. looks a lot like pottery made elsewhere, but recent ID via elemental analysis shows that it reached plantations across the Atlantic, used for sugar refining and in the home.
Woodcut 1574 Jost Amman
#ArchMol21

@MuseumLiverpool 2/13
The abundant #pottery clay in the region led to a strong potting industry around Liverpool in the post-Medieval period, in places like Prescot and Rainford. Excavations of kiln sites show large quantities of black and brown-glazed earthenwares
#ArchMol21

@MuseumLiverpool 3/13
In exchange for tobacco, sugar, and other products arriving from plantations in the Americas, merchants would ship all sorts of cargo out of Liverpool. This included pottery like pans, mugs, and sugarwares.
#ArchMol21

4/13
In the Caribbean, enslaved people worked in harsh conditions to produce sugar using earthenware sugar cones and jars. On some islands, like Barbados, the pottery was locally made, but on Jamaica, sugarwares were imported from Europe. bit.ly/3kPVKV5
#ArchMol21

5/13
Though we know pottery was coming from many places, it’s hard to know which because potters were using the same techniques and making same forms on both sides of the Atlantic. In some cases, as advertised in colonial Maryland, it was the same potters!
#ArchMol21

6/13
Black glazed redware was very common, and with only small sherds it can be hard to tell the difference between American-made and British. These are all wasters, vessels that broke during manufacture and were excavated from kiln sites.
#ArchMol21

7/13
Instead of focusing on visuals, I used mass spectrometry to identify the elemental “fingerprint” that relates to the geological origin of clay sources. LA-ICP-MS uses a laser to remove a tiny bit off a sample fragment and ID its composition.
#ArchMol21 #ArchaeoSTEM

@BritGeoSurvey 8/13
I borrowed samples from 35 kiln sites in US and UK and used those to identify the fingerprint for each region. For example, pottery made around Liverpool is similar to nearby N. Wales, but is higher in potassium and lower in tin.
#ArchMol21 #ArchaeoSTEM

@BritGeoSurvey 9/13
Each dot here represents a sample, plotted by elemental composition. As expected, pottery made in Americas is very diff. from that made in GB, and I could separate many regions. I used these results to ID pottery of unknown origin.
#ArchMol21 #ArchaeoSTEM

@BritGeoSurvey 10/13
In Virginia, most imports ceased by latter 18th C. and the ware that did arrive was either made in Liverpool or exported thru Liverpool, such as these 3 examples from Site 8, a slave quarter assemblage at Monticello in Virginia. bit.ly/2UlUiPp
#ArchMol21

11/13
On Jamaica, we could tell whether a planter was more heavily invested in trade via London or Liverpool based on the pottery. For example, Stewart Castle and Good Hope mainly had wares from Liverpool, while Mona and Seville imports were from London.
#ArchMol21

12/13
Using #ArchaeoSTEM, we’re looking at artifacts in new ways, and finding connections that would otherwise be invisible. The ocean made the world smaller, bringing parts of Liverpool to the homes and plantations of people living thousands of miles away.
#ArchMol21

13/13
Thanks for having me today, @MuseumLiverpool! Follow me or my alter-ego @CeramicTechLab @FloridaMuseum to learn more about ongoing research with #pottery and #archaeology from a variety of times and places.
#ArchMol21 #ArchaeoSTEM