“Can you tell me what this is and how old it is?” Identifying Ceramics and Using the Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland Website

Scott Strickland, Deputy Director, Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab

Chances are if you picked up one of these booklets, you're into archaeology. Maybe you have a collection of projectile points and some other things you've found on the ground. Ceramics may not make it to some collections as they are often broken into tiny little bits that are harder to distinguish on the ground from eye-level.

If you have that eagle-eye and you've found a ceramic, perhaps it feels a certain way in your hand, maybe it is reddish in color, it has specks of stuff mixed in the clay, and one side may have a decoration or some kind of uneven surface. All of those things, when examined as a whole, are the things archaeologists look for when trying to identify a ceramic.

Ceramic types as defined by archaeologists use these observations (or attributes) to separate one ceramic from another. The most common attributes archaeologists use to define types are temper, surface treatment, decoration, and vessel form (if you have enough of a ceramic pot). Other attributes include paste color, paste hardness/texture, and thickness of the vessel. As with everything in archaeology - context, or the place where it is found, is important as well.

Temper is what is mixed into clay prior to creating a pot (Figure 1). Types of temper include

crushed shell, crushed rock (of various types such as quartz, limestone, steatite, gneiss, and

more), sand, or even crushed remains of other pots (called grog). Tempering clay is an important process because the temper itself prevents shrinkage and cracking during the firing process. Once tempered, clay would be coiled to form the basic shape of a pot.

Figure 1. Close-up of grit (left) and shell (right) tempered fired clay from reproduction vessels.

After the pot has been coiled into shape any air bubbles between the coils needs to be minimized as the pockets of air could expand and lead to cracking and/or popping. This was avoided by malleating (or beating) the clay with paddles. Paddles were often wrapped in some type of fabric, which prevented the paddle from sticking to the wet clay and help to interlock the layered coils of the vessel. Malleating the clay would thin the vessel walls while also leaving distinctive patterns on the exterior surface of the clay - called surface treatments. Materials commonly wrapped around paddles included cordage, net, and fabric (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Cord-marked (left) and fabric-impressed (right)surface treatments from reproduction vessels.

Additional surface details that are often distinctive to ceramic types are the form and type of

decoration. Some vessels may be directly cord-marked, cord-marked using a cord-wrapped stick or dowel, incised, punctated, or have rims with other markings (and more!). Style of decoration also varies, with some containing complex geometric patterns or those with simple horizontal or oblique lines (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Variety of decoration types on reproduction vessels, from left to right: cord-wrapped dowel, punctated, and incised.

The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab's Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland website, first unveiled in 2002, is a tool used by professional archaeologists as well as the general public to identify artifacts across many different time periods, including a section called "Prehistoric Ceramics in Maryland." For the unacquainted, there are summaries of different pre-Contact periods that archaeologists use and simple guides for sherd identification. The presence of ceramics marks what is called the Woodland period, which is further

broken down into the Early (1250 BC - 50 AD), Middle (50 - 950 AD), or Late (950 - 1600 AD) periods. A table for sherd identification breaks down the types present by physiographic region as well, such as the Western Shore Coastal Plain, Eastern Shore Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Western Maryland.

Users can access more detailed descriptions of ceramic types using links within the table or browse by period. Individual ceramic description pages begin with any defining attributes that stand out from other ceramic types, chronology (when it dates to), distribution (where it is found), paste/temper, surface treatment, decoration, morphology (how it is constructed and vessel shape), references to how it was classified, and any radiocarbon dates that support the chronology. Galleries of artifact photographs for each type give users the ability to visually compare examples of the type against ceramics they might be trying to identify themselves.

A redesign of the Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland page is currently underway and is scheduled to be completed in 2025 (Figure 4). Enhancements will include new photographs, a searchable database, and attribute tags for photos. Users will be able to browse examples of types by temper, decoration, surface treatment, or other attributes. The redesign will also feature new information for each type, including recent research with updated chronologies and distributions.

Figure 4. Screenshot of the pending Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland redesign.