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It is our hope that the pictures and descriptions in this section will assist you in discovering the identity of your pottery sherds and the history behind them. If you are unable to identify your finds from this list, please feel free to contact me (Lloyd Schroder – see CONTACT US) with pictures of your discoveries and information regarding their general location. The pictures should include a clear picture of surface decoration, rim structure (if possible), the interior of the vessel, and a cross-section of the sherd. I will make every effort to respond as quickly as possible to your requests.
For more detailed information on these and other pottery types within the Southeastern United States, please see our “Publications” page to order Lloyd Schroder’s Field Guide to Southeastern Indian Pottery (Revised & Expanded).
This amazing new book contains over 500 pottery types, each explained in very readable terms with thousands of illustrations and maps of distribution. The volume has earned the acilades of senior archaeologists like David Anderson of the University of Tennessee and well-known Georgia archaeologist Jerald Ledbetter. No serious student of archaeology should be without it.
Research: Hollingsworth, Alabama Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 37, 1991
Site & location: Sheep’s Bluff Shelter, Franklin Co, Alabama
Temper: sand
Surface decoration: Plain, may be red filmed
Vessel form: lips are flattened, rims can be everted or turned sharply outward at a 90 degree angle to the body of the vessel
Chronology: AD 300-600 Middle Woodland
Distribution: Upper Tombigbee River drainage area
Research: Steve Wimberly, 1960
Site & location: Bayou La Batre Shell Midden site, Mobile County, Alabama
Temper: Moderate amounts of medium-coarse sand, often with granule gravel additions represented by particles 3 to 4 mm in diameter. Sherds tempered with fine sand and fine sand together with minor amounts of clay lumps are much more common than in Bayou La Batre Stamped.
Surface decoration: Plain. Surfaces were floated to bring the finer particles to the surface.
Vessel form: No complete vessels are known. Deep Truncate-conoidal open bowls with a small base platform are most common. Two minority forms: a hemispherical bowl form having a slightly constricted mouth, and the other a globular jar form that is 15 to 20 cm wide having a short rim. One very small globular jar form was recovered that may have had a diameter of only 8 cm. Bases are represented by tetrapodal types, either wedge or mammiform, semi-annular, pseudo-annular, and rounded. All bases except the rounded type apparently accompany the truncate-conoidal bowl form. The rounded base most likely accompanied the hemispherical bowls and globular jars.
Chronology: Early Woodland period and may have extended into the Middle Woodland at the McQuorquodale Mound site.
Distribution: The Mobile Bay region and up the Mobile and Tombigbee rivers into Clarke County, Alabama.
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Connestee pottery has a distribution range that extends across southeastern Tennessee, western North and South Carolina, and northern Alabama and Georgia. Radiocarbon dates from places like Russell Cave in Alabama, Ice House Bottom in Tennessee and the Garden Creek mound in North Carolina date this pottery between 530 and 805 A.D. Tempered with fine sand and small amounts of crushed quartz, Connestee pottery is decorated with brush marks, check stamping, cord marking or plain surfaces.
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Research: Ford and Willey (1940)
Site & location: Clarke County, Alabama sites
Temper: Clay and sand
Surface decoration: Plain
Vessel form: Medium to large deep bowls are dominant with rounded, vertical sides. Vessel mouths are slightly constricted and bases are flattened and can be rounded or square. Jar-like bowls with slightly everted rims are infrequent. Rim folds are narrow and rounded while other rims are rounded to nearly flanged with interior folds to form a thick, broad, flat lip. Some lips are cambered and appear as pseudo-rims set off with a shallow, rounded, incised line.
Chronology: Middle Woodland
Distribution: Louisiana, Mississippi, southwestern Alabama
Research: Hollingsworth, Alabama Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 37, 1991
Site & location: Sheep’s Bluff Shelter, Franklin Co, Alabama
Temper: Grog
Surface decoration: Plain
Vessel form: Some flat-bottomed and boat-shaped vessels
Chronology: AD 500-1000
Distribution: Northwestern Alabama
Research: Described by Wimberly (1953)
Site & location: McLeod Estate Village site
Temper: Fine to medium fine sand
Surface decoration: A single, broad, sharply cut, incised line that is often poorly drawn and almost wavy in places sometimes encircling the exterior of the vessel below the lip.
Vessel form: Flattened-globular bowls with constricted openings to hemispherical bowls and shallow bowls with straight to slightly out-slanting rounded sides. Rims range from simple to a minority of rounded folded rims that are plain and poorly finished.
Chronology: Early to Middle Woodland, probably persisting into the Early Mississippian period
Distribution: Southwestern Alabama
Research: Hollingsworth, Alabama Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 37, 1991
Site & location: Sheep’s Bluff Shelter, Franklin Co, Alabama
Temper: Limestone, pit marks may be evident where limestone has eroded out of the surface
Surface decoration: Plain
Vessel form: Jars with podal supports.
Chronology: AD 150-500 Middle Woodland marker (Wheeler fiber was Late Archaic to Early Woodland) Copena culture of northern Alabama
Distribution: Middle Tennessee River valley and eastern Alabama
This burial urn was recovered by C.B. More at the Durand’s Bend site in Autauga County, Alabama. The top cover pot is Fort Walton and the bottom vessel is Mississippi Plain.
Private Collection, Alabama
Research: Dr Douglas Jones
Site & location: Davison Creek Site, Monroe County near Natchez
Temper: Shell
Surface decoration: Plain
Vessel form: Strap handles, flattened or rounded lips, jars with flared rims and constricted necks
Chronology: as early as AD 900, Early Miss. AD 1000-1250, mid Miss. AD 1250-1400, Late Miss. AD 1400-1540, Pensacola culture (AD 1050-1550)
Research: Hollingsworth, Alabama Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 37, 1991
Site & location: Sheep’s Bluff Shelter, Franklin Co, Alabama
Temper: sand
Surface decoration: Plain
Vessel form: Unknown
Chronology: Griffin’s Late Gulf Formational stage in northwest Alabama 500 BC to 100 BC
Distribution: Middle Tennessee River valley of northern Alabama Wheeler Reservoir area
Temper: crushed live shell. There is also a little sand and grit. Sometimes compact base texture; sometimes laminated and controlled. Paste Core is usually gray and surfaces usually buff or red-buff. In some cases pottery was fired gray-black throughout.
Distribution: most common in extreme western and of Northwest Florida, but it is found in small quantities as far east and south as Tampa Bay. Probably very common in South Alabama.
Age: middle Mississippian, Ft. Walton period. Also found as a minority type in safety Harbor sites.
Form: forms undoubtedly comparable to those of the Fort Walton series. Rim is usually unmodified except for an occasional heavy, round exterior fold. Lips are from flat to round-pointed. Bases were probably rounded.appendages were small vertical loop handles and ornamental nodes beneath the rim.
Decoration: surfaces were probably smoothed and polished before erosion. Most specimens are pitted as a result of the temper particles leaching out. Several of the black or gray-black sherds have retained a polish, on pitted surface. Color varies according to firing.
Research: Defined as a pottery type of the Tchefuncte Culture by Ford and Quimby, 1945.
Site & location: Bayou La Batre Shell Midden site, Mobile County, Alabama
Temper: Large amounts of angular lumps of clay (possibly crushed sherds giving the surface a lumpy texture) usually with additions of small to medium amounts of fine to medium-coarse sand. Paste color is pinkish tan with a dark gray core when not fired all the way through.
Surface decoration: Plain
Vessel form: No complete vessels are known from Alabama. Sherds indicate deep conical bowl with podal supports or small hemispherical bowl with straight sides. Bases are tetrapodal in either wedge or mammiform style.
Chronology: Early Woodland period
Distribution: With other Tchefunicte pottery in southern Mississippi and the Mobile Bay region of Alabama.
Research: Hollingsworth, Alabama Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 37, 1991
Site & location: Sheep’s Bluff Shelter, Franklin Co, Alabama
Temper: Fiber
Surface decoration: Plain with fiber markings clearly visible
Vessel form: Bowls with straight rims that are slightly rounded toward the inside of the vessel
Chronology: Late Archaic to Early Woodland
Distribution: Most of Alabama and western Georgia
