Archaeology of Historic Pottery

A key artifact recovered from historic period archaeological sites is the historic pottery sherd, which can often give precise dates of manufacture, whether from maker's marks or from styles or designs. Here's a sampling of reference sites on historic ceramic identification, pretty interesting for all of us.

Picol Passo and the Art of Maiolica
A contributed article by Damon Moon on the history of maiolica ceramics is a must read for late-medieval fans of ceramics.

Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland
The Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum website has a fabulous diagnostic classification tree for both prehistoric and historic period ceramics. Using it, one can identify an assemblage of sherds, and find out the known distribution and date of the type. Very cool indeed.

Worcestershire Pottery Home
The Worcestershire Pottery site is a searchable illustrated database of pottery made in Worcestershire, England, from prehistory to c 1900AD.

English Colonial Ceramics in New South Wales
From Robert Varman, photographs and descriptions of historic ceramics in Australia.

Identify Your Sherd
From the Florida Museum of Natural History, a terrifically useful resource helping with identification of historic ceramic sherds and pottery.

Maiolica from Northern New Spain
From the prolific Anita Cohen-Williams and Jack S. Williams, a website from Center for Spanish Colonial Research including a paper on maiolica from northern New Spain.

Discuss in my forum

Archaeology