ColonowareBack to Galleries

Colonoware is a hand-built, unglazed, low-fired, locally-made coarse earthenware found on many domestic archaeological sites in Virginia, South Carolina, the Caribbean and to a lesser extent in North Carolina and Georgia. As an almost ubiquitous late 17^th to late 19^th century ware, colonoware has been used by historians and archaeologists to explore a variety of topics including consumerism and local market participation, household-level craft production, dining styles and diet preferences, retention of folk traditions, and ritual or medicinal practices.

Data on over 135,000 colonoware sherds are housed in the DAACS database. Vessel form, decoration and function are recorded at the sherd level and provide researchers measurable proxies to pursue these research questions at both the site and regional level. View exciting examples of the variation in these attributes on colonoware from Virginia and South Carolina in this gallery.­­

This gallery is written and curated by Leslie Cooper, DAACS Archaeological Analyst.

Artifact photographs in this gallery by Karen E. Price, George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

This mended bowl is from the Pope site in Tidewater, Virginia, and clearly exhibits a scalloped rim similar to that seen on imported refined wares that were popular during the eighteenth century. Colonoware is often distinguished from other locally-made, hand-built pottery in the archaeological record based on the presence of such European-influenced decoration. Imported royal pattern creamware and later, shell-edged wares dominated the consumer tableware market in the colonies during this time. The presence of similar decorations on colonoware perhaps indicates an attempt to compete with these wares in the market and likely explains their overall decrease in frequency and eventual replacement by imported wares at sites over time in Virginia.

Eighteenth-century consumers flocked to local markets to purchase a vast array of imported goods including the latest ceramic tablewares for display and use in their homes. Locally-made colonoware offered enslaved consumers cheaper and more accessible alternatives to costly imported European ceramics. Virginia colonoware was produced in a variety of forms to satisfy the market, including plates, bowls, pipkins, porringers and chamber pots.  This bowl with a flared rim, recovered from the Pope site in Virginia, mimicked a popular rim style on refined wares of the eighteenth century. Bowls with everted rims and marleys were seen on many fashionable imported wares throughout the time period.

The base of this jar from Yaughan Plantation in South Carolina exhibits fairly extensive sooting, likely remnants of its days as a cooking jar.  While Virginia colonoware vessel forms are numerous, the comparative number of forms on plantation sites in South Carolina is notably few, with small jars like this one, and bowls dominating the assemblages. Enslaved individuals used colonoware on a daily basis for cooking, transport, and storage purposes.

Bowls make up sixty-seven percent of the identifiable colonoware vessel forms from South Carolina in the DAACS database. Stews and soups were regularly consumed by enslaved individuals in bowls like this one, from Yaughan Plantation in the low country of South Carolina.  The “fire clouded” surface appearance indicates uneven firing, a result of being fired out in the open rather than in a kiln, and not the result of cooking use (Rice 1987; Shepard 1980). The effect also results from smoky flame coming into contact with the surface, possibly an intentional coloration treatment produced for aesthetic purposes.

Surface treatments like fire clouding and burnishing, a polishing of the surface using a stone to create a lustrous finish, are seen on modern Native American vessels made by Catawba potters. Catawba potters are known to have traveled and sold their wares at plantations along Indian trails in the southeast during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. DAACS data also show that mica inclusions are common on these sherds from South Carolina, perhaps indicating they are from the same, or a similar clay source.

Decoration on colonoware varies from scalloped-edge rim styles seen on European wares of the period to impressed designs traditionally associated with Native American pottery such as punctate designs. These designs were executed by pressing the end of a plant reed onto the surface of the pot during the leather hard stage of manufacture, creating a pattern of small circles. There is evidence that objects such as skeleton keys and tobacco pipe stems were also used for creating punctate designs on colonoware.

This sherd from Yaughan Plantation in South Carolina exhibits a combination of punctate and incised decoration. The potter likely used a stick or pointed implement to form the zig zag design before it was fired.

This example, from Yaughan Plantation in South Carolina, is a “foot” or podal support that would have attached to the base of a pot. The form is clearly influenced by pot supports used on European-style hearths and on tables, an attribute not seen on pottery at pre-European contact period archaeological sites.

Prior to European contact, locally-made pottery forms had rounded bases. Cooking took place over an open fire and pots were suspended above or supported by stones around hearths on the ground. Vessels with flat bases and foot rings appear in the archaeological record only after European contact in the New World.

Bowls and jars are by far the most common colonoware vessel forms on South Carolina plantation sites. Jars were ostensibly used to heat liquids and cook stews and the like. This is an interior view of a flat-based jar from Curriboo plantation in South Carolina. Pots like this with flat (not rounded) bases are absent from the archaeological record at pre-European contact sites. Before their implementation, vessels would have been suspended or supported by stones over an open fire during cooking. Flat bases allow the pots to sit flat on European-style hearths and tables. Note the sooting present on the exterior of this jar, a result of its life as a cooking pot.

One of the ways we can measure the popularity of colonoware at sites and through time is by comparing sherd frequencies to those of refined imported wares at sites. When we do that for Virginia sites using DAACS data, we see that the frequency of colonoware declines over time because it is replaced by popular and increasingly more accessible imported wares; however, one site, the Pope site in Virginia, is an outlier and has an unusually high frequency of colonoware for its occupation period compared to that of other sites in the Chesapeake. One reason for this is the possibility it was a pottery production site. These fragments appear to be unfired pottery coils, possible evidence of household-level craft production.

The marks on the base of this sherd (an “X” inside a rectangle), from Curriboo Plantation in South Carolina, were added after the vessel was fired, not during its manufacture. Researchers have postulated these infrequently occurring marks, located on the bases of colonoware bowls in particular, have some religious or curing significance (Ferguson 1992, 1999; Ogata 1995).

The cosmogram is a geometric representation of the cosmos used traditionally among Bakongo priests from the southwest coast of Africa. The basic form is a cross with one line representing the boundary between the living world and the dead, and the other representing the path of power from below to above as well as the vertical path across the boundary (Ferguson 1992). Contemporary accounts site the use of the cosmogram during certain charms and rituals carried out by African American priests (Ferguson 1992). Some archaeologists believe these marked bowls to be examples from such ceremonies.