First Period Ceramics at the Sherburne House

Hello everyone -- I’m Callie Pray, an archaeology and history student at the University of Edinburgh, and one of the archaeology interns at Strawbery Banke! Despite having lived in Scotland for past 3 years studying at university, I grew up in the Seacoast area and have a long history at Strawbery Banke. I attended the 2017 field school where we dug at Penhallow, and I enjoyed it so much that I returned to intern this summer! During the lab session I’ve been going through the archaeological collection to find objects from previous excavations at Sherburne House to help reinterpret the story of the Sherburne family.
I'm ready to answer visitors' questions at the Open House! 
The Sherburne House is the oldest remaining structure at Strawbery Banke and the house has remained on the same piece of land for hundreds of years.  A rich archaeological and documentary record help the museum to tell the stories of the people who lived in this house.  By going through the ceramics in the collection, I’ll be helping the Collections Department select pieces to feature while also highlighting the wide range of vessels used by the Sherburnes at the turn of the 18th century. 

One of the most common types of artifacts archaeologists encounter in a historical excavation is ceramics. Although ceramics may break into tiny little pieces, those ceramic fragments are very resilient in the ground, thanks to the chemical changes that happen during the firing process. It’s a good thing that they’re so durable, because ceramics provide a lot of information for archaeologists!
A fragment of Combed (Staffordshire-type) Slipware -- that yellow and brown combination is unmistakable!
Ceramics are just as fashionable as they are functional, and their necessity in cooking and storage contexts means that they are frequent in the archaeological record. Trends in molds, patterns, and colors changed over time, and because of this, ceramic typologies are a reliable methods to date the occupation periods of a site. Ceramics may also inform interpretations about the social statuses of  people, and which groups they were in contact with. Certain ceramics were made in one particular region, and were moved along trade routes. 
A blue and white tin-glazed earthenware sherd fresh out of the ground -- it looks brand new! 
The ceramics recovered at the Sherburne House include a wide range, from high-end porcelains to utilitarian redwares. The Sherburne family was a prominent merchant family in Portsmouth, and they imported the finest ceramics from overseas. At the turn of the 18th century, this included combed slipwares from England, Westerwald stoneware from Germany, and Chinese porcelain from China. 

During the lab session, I selected two redware jars that had been excavated in the 1980s and were previously reconstructed and displayed in the Jones House archaeological exhibit (now closed). The jars are similar to ceramic sherds recovered from the nearby Marshall Pottery, and may have been used by the enslaved people working and living at the Sherburne House. I spent most of the week cleaning and repairing the mends to the the jars -- hopefully they’ll be back on display in a few years! 
The finished products! 
I hope these ceramics will contribute to telling the stories of the people who once lived at the Sherburne House, and will help visitors learn about the importance of history and archaeology!

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