Colonoware

Colonoware, which is alternately called Colono-Indian Ware, is a type of earthenware created by African Americans along the Atlantic Coast ranging north and south from Delaware to Florida and as far west as Tennessee and Kentucky beginning in the Colonial era.

[citation needed] In Charleston, South Carolina, thirteen colonoware from the 18th century were found with folded strip roulette decorations.

This forced slaves and plantation owners to create or demand their own form of "rudimentary pottery" to avoid the higher expenses, i.e.

Colonoware was first identified by the British archaeologist Ivor Noël Hume, who published his findings in 1962, in a paper entitled "An Indian Ware of the Colonial Period" in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Virginia.

He devoted to the discussion of this particular earthenware, and intended his paper to be a contribution to the "study of American Indian archaeology and culture".

[5] In subsequent decades, further excavations took place across South Carolina under the mandates of the National Historic Preservation Act and other federal statutes.

The presence of people of different social status and different ethnic backgrounds allows archeologists to examine how the use of colonoware changed over time.

[8] Research in this area helped contribute to the argument that colonoware became a badge of disenfranchisement for those who were forced to make and use it due to conditions of slavery.

[8] Following the United States gaining its independence from Britain, and where decorative pottery was allowed, colonoware was sometimes used as a symbol of status by slaves and occasionally freemen through "power" sculptures in the form of Afro-carolinian face vessels.

The Afro-carolinian face vessels are linked to West African traditions, often employing the use of white clay for an emphasis of eyes and teeth, a practice that can be traced back to Africa used for religious purposes.

Manufacturing restrictions regarding ceramics were lifted during the Federal period giving potters the freedom to produce work that expanded past simple colonoware.

His clients often consisted of wealthier individuals in the area, some of which included "oyster harvesters, church leaders, and abolitionists" all of which were interracial.