The Sangamo Frontier by Robert Mazrim

Author:Robert Mazrim [Mazrim, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ISBN-13: 9780226514253, University Of Chicago Press, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780226514239
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2006-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

e a r t h e n wa r e a t c o t t o n h i l l

f i g . 1 1 . 1

Drawing of an early nineteenth-century earthenware kiln and shop in Indiana,

probably very similar in appearance to the kiln at Cotton Hill. The bottle-shaped kiln is

at the far left.

wedges. Glazed vessels could easily stick together during firing, thus ru-

ining the ware. Poorly stacked kilns could result in the breakage of doz-

ens of vessels. A kiln such as that used at Cotton Hill could hold several

hundred vessels.

Once firing commenced, hardwoods were stoked into the fireboxes in

such a way as to create a slow and even heat, which was allowed to rise

to a temperature of approximately 1800 –2000 degrees Fahrenheit. This

usually took about two days. Once that temperature was reached, the kiln

was allowed to cool slowly. Loading, firing, and cooling a kiln of ware

took five to seven days.

After a kiln of pottery had slowly cooled, it was carefully unloaded.

Undamaged wares were usually packed onto a wagon and delivered

to nearby retailers, or were sold from the shop itself (figure 11.1). Chris-

topher Newcomer sold 325 vessels to Springfield merchants Gatton and

Enos in April of 1828 —very possibly from the same kiln load. Those

325 pots had a wholesale value of $49.62 or the equivalent of about

$1000 in today’s dollars. In today’s market, Newcomer’s pots would have

had a wholesale value of about $3 each, and would have probably re-

tailed for around $5.

The pots that had fallen, stuck together, or warped during firing were

191

c h a p t e r e l e v e n

usually tossed into a nearby ravine, open pit, or onto the ground surface

behind the kiln. When archaeologists visit the site of a pottery shop,

these are the wares that they find.

The Kiln Site

The archaeological remains of the pottery shop founded by David

Brunk’s stepbrothers were first discovered in the early 1970s. The site

lies in a horse pasture, near a two-lane blacktop that is actually a paved

segment of Edwards’ Trace. A history class from a local university con-

ducted some archaeological excavations in the mid-1970s, unearthing

the foundation of the kiln itself. The results of this work were never

reported, however, and most of the excavation records are thought to

be lost. Unfortunately, just because an archaeologist digs into a site

does not necessarily mean it will be properly recorded, preserved, or

interpreted. Lost excavation records are as bad as lost artifacts. An ar-

chaeologist’s mishandled trowel is only a little better than a developer’s

bulldozer.

I first visited the site in 1977 and made several collections of pottery

wasters from an eroded surface near the kiln feature. In the 1990s I re-

turned to the site and excavated several test units within a concentration

of waster debris located behind the site of the kiln and pottery shop. Es-

sentially, we were digging into a thick surface of broken pots that had

been scattered across the ground surface behind the kiln during the first

fifteen years of the pottery’s business (figure 11.2). The excavation unit 1

and unit 2 samples appear to date primarily

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