On January 8th, members of Monticello’s archaeology team and DAACS traveled to Detroit to participate in the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Elizabeth Bollwerk co-chaired a session titled “Unearthing Craft and Customs Embedded in Clay: The Archaeology of Locally Made Coarse Earthenwares,” which brought together thirteen presentations from DAACS collaborators and colleagues working across multiple regions. The session featured papers examining coarse earthenwares from the Southeastern United States and the Caribbean, with scholars presenting methodological approaches for quantifying and comparing assemblages both within and between sites.
Among the presenters was Corey Sattes, who shared recent advances in ceramic digital imaging techniques and Fraser Neiman, who co-authored a paper on the cultural dynamics behind the production and distribution of coarse earthenwares on the island of Jamaica in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Presenters also explored how ceramic data can be integrated with other archaeological evidence to illuminate economic strategies, cultural preferences, and adaptive responses in historical communities.
