Historical Archaeology in Wachovia: Excavating Eighteenth Century Bethabara and Moravian Pottery

461 Pages·1999·20.04 MB·English

by  Stanley South

HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY IN
WACHOVIA
Excavating Eighteenth-Century
Bethabara and Moravian Pottery
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HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY IN
WACHOVIA
Excavating Eighteenth-Century
Bethabara and Moravian Pottery
Stanley South
South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology
and lnstitute for Southern Studies
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
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eBookISBN: 0-306-47143-4
Print ISBN: 0-306-45658-3
©2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Print ©1999 Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers
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For those spellbound by
shadows from the past ...
Especially Jewell,
on whose zeal a dark shadow fell.
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Preface
(1999)
It is rewarding to realize that a book written 30 years ago is as relevant
today to those interested in historical archaeology and colonial American
pottery as the day it was written. That is the case with this two-part work.
In the 1975 Preface, written to accompany a dozen copies distributed at
that time for use by researchers, I explain why this volume has taken so
long to be published. The original work, Discovery in Wachovia, has now
been divided into two parts: Part I, on the archaeology at Bethabara, was
written in 1966, and Part II, on the Moravian potters Gottfried Aust and
Rudolph Christ and their ware, was written between 1966 and 1972.
In preparing this volume for publication I have added a few foot-
notes to update the text to inform the reader of more recent develop-
ments since 1975. I have edited the book as it appeared in 1972 by
adding a few sentences here and there and by dropping others in the
interest of clarity. I have also included captions to the photographs, many
of which had not had captions in the original version.
A major change from the 12 copies of the manuscript distributed in
1975 has been with the maps. The 12 maps and drawings George
Demmy and I made were from over 3 feet wide to 5 feet long. When I
distributed the dozen copies in 1975, I folded these and put them in a
box accompanying the manuscript. To allow these to be published here
I have reduced them and literally split them into as many as seven parts.
Each map included plan and profile drawings of several excavated ruins
as well as documented notes relating to them. When I split them into
individual parts I assigned a map or drawing number and identifying letter
to each part. The parts were then distributed throughout the volume as
appropriate to the text. Thus, what was once a large illustrative drawing
will appear here interpaginated with parts of other drawings along with
text. Each of these parts has been assigned a figure number appearing
vii
viii in the List of Figures. I have also provided a List of Oversize Maps and
Drawings to document how each drawing was split.
PREFACE
(1 999)
Acknowledgments
The publication of this book was made possible through two grants
from the Archaeological Research Trust (ART) at the South Carolina
Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. These funds allowed the
typewritten manuscript to be put into word-processing format by Lisa
Hudgins. I am extremely grateful for the funding provided by ART and to
Lisa for her expertise in helping me prepare the book for publication.
Thanks also to James Legg for drawing the zigzag Potter's price symbols
used by Rudolph Christ and to Historic Bethabara Park and the Wachovia
Historical Society for their support toward the publication of this volume
and to Brad Rauschenberg, John Larson, and Ed Hill for their interest.
I would like to thank the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts,
Old Salem, Inc.; The Wachovia Historical Society; and the Unity Archives
of the Moravian Church in Herrnhut, Germany, for permission to publish
some of the illustrations in this book.
I also thank Plenum Press for agreeing to publish it.
Preface
(1975)
Over 10 years have passed since I first began the archaeological work at
Bethabara and Salem, North Carolina, in 1963. Five years later, the 1968
field season at Salem was followed by my accepting my present position
at the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South
Carolina early in 1969. I brought the data with me to South Carolina to
continue work on writing the results of our archaeological explorations
from 1963– 1968 into a book on the potters Gottfried Aust, Rudolph Christ,
and William Ellis, as revealed by the documents and archaeology at
Bethabara and Salem.
In 1966, I prepared three copies of the book as it existed at that time.
I submitted a manuscript with maps, drawings, and photographs to John
F. Blair, publisher, who agreed to publish it under the title A House of
Passage on the Carolina Frontier. However, after 3 years it was still under
review, so I withdrew it from his hands. I had also given a copy to my
assistant, Brad Rauschenberg.
I continued work on the book as other projects would permit until by
1972 it had reached the stage of development seen in this volume: by that
time it was called Discovery in Wachovia. The major work needed then
was correlation of photographs and drawings with the text and writing of
summarizing and synthesizing sections. It was at this point, in 1972, that
the fine book The Moraviun Potters in North Carolina was published by John
Bivins, Jr., with photographs by Brad Rauschenberg, utilizing the Moravian
records and photographs from my 1966 report (Bivins 1972). It also
illustrated pottery I had recovered during 1963– 1968 excavations and that
I had restored and photographed for use in my book. With the appearance
of Bivins’ book, the publication of Discovery in Wachovia seen here was
no longer a possibility, and it has remained untouched since that time,
ix