(Beth Bollwerk and Lindsay Bloch examine a mended colonoware vessel discarded over 200 years ago at the Accotink site from Fairfax, Virginia. Photo provided.) The National Science Foundation, the independent federal agency that supports scientific discovery across all 50 states and U.S. territories, has awarded a $254,602 grant to Monticello’s Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS). The grant funds new research to advance the understanding of the lives of ordinary people in Colonial Virginia and the Carolinas who made and used pottery vessels known as colonoware. Collaborating on this study is the S.C. Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust program. Colonoware is a type of handmade, low-fired pottery with roots in Indigenous North American and African traditions. Tiny details in these vessels, invisible to the naked eye, are now accessible using new scientific methods. They hold clues about the traditions that informed the manufacture of individual excavated pots, where they were made, and the goals of their makers, such as whether they made pots for household use or for sale on markets. “This will be the largest study of colonoware ever conducted, spanning Virginia and North and South Carolina, allowing us to understand how potters and pottery consumers responded to very different colonial economies,” said Elizabeth Bollwerk, project manager for DAACS and principal investigator for the National Science Foundation grant. To achieve geographical scale required, DAACS is collaborating with colleagues from the University of North Carolina, the S.C Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust program and the University of Missouri. Using existing archaeological collections from the tri-state region, researchers will analyze hundreds of thousands of colonoware fragments and other artifacts. The team will apply advanced techniques to identify where vessels were produced, how people learned to make them, and how they were used in daily life. Officials said the grant offers a valuable opportunity to build on earlier work conducted by DAACS on the archaeology of colonial societies whose economies were based on slavery. Throughout their research, the project team will collaborate with Indigenous and Black descendant communities to incorporate their feedback into the methods used to gather, analyze, interpret, and share the data generated from this project. Resulting data will be made available on the DAACS website, in accordance with these community collaborators. The S.C. Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust program was created between 1974-1976, the first such program in the nation, to help stem the tide of habitat loss by protecting critical natural habitats and significant cultural sites. Enabling legislation directed the state natural resources agency, in concert with other state agencies, to set aside a portion of the state’s rich natural and cultural heritage in a system of heritage preserves to be protected for the benefit of present and future generations.
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