Materializing Colonial Identities in Clay

"Colonoware was most likely produced by African and Indigenous potters and used by them for cooking, serving, and storing food. It formed the foundation of colonial foodways in many settlements across the southeastern United States. Even so, compared with other ceramics from this period, less is understood about its production and use because of the lack of documentation. The past several decades of colonoware research have provided valuable archaeological data for characterizing interaction among Europeans, Indigenous, and Africans, especially within the contexts of the African and Indigenous slave trade and rice plantation systems. In Materializing Colonial Identities in Clay, Jon Bernard Marcoux, Corey A. H. Sattes, and contributors consider the place of this unique form of material culture to explore the active roles that African Americans and Indigenous people played in constructing southern colonial culture and part of their shared history with Europeans. The chapters represent the full range of colonoware research: from the beginning to the end of its production and use, from urban to rural contexts, and from its intraregional variation in the Lowcountry to the broad patterns of colonialism across the early American Southeast. The book summarizes current approaches in colonoware research and how these may bridge the gaps between broader colonial American studies, Indigenous studies, and African Diaspora studies. A concluding discussion contextualizes the chapters through the perspectives of intersectionality and Black feminist theory, drawing attention to the gendered and racialized meanings embodied in colonoware, and considering how colonialism and slavery have shaped these cultural dimensions and archaeologists' study of them"--