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Pottery is an amazing artifact. There are many types, all with different designs or no design at all. Designs come from the potter’s imagination or his beliefs. All have different tempers, some of grit or small pebbles, some of Spanish Moss that has burned away, leaving only a trace of its existence. Some types are tempered with sand and some with clay; others with what some would call no temper at all, only to discover that there are small, microscopic sponge spicules that hold it together.
Think about this. Pottery is a lot like people. Each one was fashioned by the Potter’s hand, each uniquely designed from the Potter’s heart. Some were designed for daily use while others were designed for special occasions and celebration. All were tempered, but all have a different temperament. How has the Potter designed you and tempered you? What was His special plan and purpose? We are clay in His hands. Many are like much of the pottery we find, broken and discarded by the world, but there is still hope. Like the pot sherds that were broken and cast aside, then recovered and rounded into gaming stones to become the center of joy in an Indian’s life, our broken lives can be renewed to become the center of joy in the Potter’s heart.
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: Bennie Keel defined this defined this as an annular or segmented coil pottery that was built on a conical, disc, or tabular base. Keel’s description of this type was based on his research in sites in western North Carolina.
TEMPER: Connestee Simple Stamped pottery was tempered with fine to medium sand with small amounts of crushed quartz occasionally mixed in. The sand often contained mica naturally, but it was not purposefully mixed in. The surface was smooth, but sandy to the touch with a light tan to dark brown exterior, with darker colors being more predominant.
SURFACE DECORATION: The entire vessel was finished with simple stamping that ran parallel or diagonally to the lip, but rarely perpendicular. The entire vessel was covered with stamping except for a plain band that was sometimes present between the rim and shoulder of the vessel, rarely with a circuit of round or rectangular punctations along the shoulder of the vessel.
VESSEL FORM: Vessel forms included conoidal jars, hemispherical bowls and flat-based jars with podal supports. Lips were rounded, flattened or chamfered. These were notched, brushed or punctated. Rims were most often flaring, but were also straight, vertical or incurved.
CHRONOLOGY: A number of radiocarbon dates from various sites have been associated with Connestee pottery that range from Middle to Late Woodland periods. From Russell Cave, Alabama, the type dated to A.D. 740+/- 100. In Tennessee the type dated to A.D. 605+/-90 at Icehouse Bottom. In Georgia at Tunacunnhee it dated to A.D. 150; at Manderville to A.D. 530+/-150. In North Carolina at the Garden Creek Mound No.2 site it dated to A.D. 805+/-85. Keel concluded that Connestee pottery disappeared between A.D 600 to 650.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION: Connestee pottery has been found in western North Carolina, western South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and northwestern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama.
Joseph Caldwell and Antonio Waring named this type in 1939 during their work at the Deptford site in Chatham County, Georgia. Caldwell later named essentially the same ware as Cartersville during work on the Altoona Resivore survey, naming it for the city of Cartersville, Georgia. Cartersville Simple Stamped, Check Stamped, and Linear Check Stamped types and the corresponding design patterns for Deptford pottery are exactly the same with one exception; their location. Middle Woodland simple stamped pottery that is found north of Georgia’s Fall Line is referred to as Cartersville Simple Stamped while the same pottery found south of the Fall Line is called Deptford Simple Stamped pottery. Its age and make up are the same.
These types are tempered with sand or grit. Simple stamped decoration consists of straight, parallel linear groves stamped into the paste. The decoration covered the entire body of te vesses. Known vessel forms include pots, deep bowls and flattened globular bowls. The types date to the Middle Woodland period between 200 BC and about 500 AD and are found in southeastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, southern South Carolina, eastern Alabama, all of Georgia, and northern and central Florida.
This pottery was defined by David Phelps and was formerly known as Wacissa Cross Simple Stamped. Deptford Cross Simple pottery has the typical grit tempered paste as do other Deptford types. The simple stamping designs are laid out in a purposful and carefully exicuted cross-cross pattern. Vessel forms might include deep jars and a bowl form with (or without) podal supports as illustrated by Gordon Willey.
Unlike most Deptford pottery, this type is part of the Early Woodland period. Also unlike most Deptford pottery, this type has a very limited range of distribution in northern Florida and southwestern Georgia.
This type was named by Joseph Caldwell in 1950 while doing research within the Allatona Reservoir area. It was named for the old Galt’s Ferry over the Etowah River. Galt Simple Stamped pottery was made by the Cherokee people of the 18th century in northwestern Georgia. It is grit tempered and the simple stamping covers the entire vessel. It is found from southeastern Tennessee and extreme western North Carolina to northeastern Alabama and northwestern Georgia.
RESEARCH: David S. Phelps defined this type in 1965 from sites along the northwestern, central and southern Gulf Coast of Florida.[i]
TEMPER: This is a fiber-tempered pottery that is generally rougher and less well-made than Stallings or Wheeler types. The tempering material generally shifts from plant fiber to sand over time, but the type described by Phelps includes this transition.
SURFACE DECORATION: The surface of this type is decorated with parallel or crossed dowel-made impressions over the entire surface of the vessel.
VESSEL FORMS: Most fiber-tempered vessels of this type were fashioned after the steatite vessels before them into deep or shallow bowls with simple rims and rounded lips.
CHRONOLOGY: The Norwood types are believed to be related to the St. Simons type along the Atlantic coast of Georgia and may be a very late variety of the fiber tempered sequence.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: Norwood pottery is believed to occur along the Florida Gulf Coast, and into southwestern Georgia.
Phelps, David S., The Norwood Series of Fiber-Tempered Ceramics. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin2:65-69, 1965
RESEARCH: The Qualla series was named by Brian Egloff based upon excavations by a number of sites in western North Carolina, as well as northern South Carolina. Bennie C. Keel again discussed this type in 1976.[i] The type was named after the Qualla Cherokee Reservation. Keel reported that 81 percent of the pottery recovered from the Tuckasegee site in Jackson County, North Carolina. It seems important to recognize that there is, as Egloff believed, a marked difference between the pottery forms produced by the Georgia and South Carolina Cherokee potters (Lower Towns), the North Carolina Villages (Middle, Valley and Out Towns), and the Tennessee Overhill Towns.
TEMPER: This type was tempered with moderate to large amounts of grit. Lamar pottery in Georgia does not use a simple stamped design.
SURFACE DECORATION: The simple stamping designs on this type run diagonally to the rim and appear to have little over stamping. The interior surfaces are finished by burnishing, making this type distinctive.
VESSEL FORMS: Sherd examples at the Tuckasegee site suggested simple bowls, carinated bowls, globular jars with short necks, and large jars with constricted mouths. Appendages were rare on Qualla vessels and none were recovered at this site. Folded finger impressed rim fillets are typical as they are with Lamar pottery.
CHRONOLOGY: Cherokee potters made this type during the Late Mississippian and Historic period. Radiocarbon dating at the Tuckasegee site (N.C.) fell at A.D. 1775 +/- 55 years, the Garden Creek Mound site (N.C.) dated at A.D. 1730 +/- 100 years, and the Chauga site (S.C.) dated to A.D. 1120 +/- 150 years.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: The type is distributed throughout western North and South Carolina, eastern Tennessee and perhaps extreme northeastern Georgia.
[i] Keel, Bennie C., Cherokee Archaeology, A Study of the Appalachian Summit, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville 1976
RESEARCH: Antonio Waring named and defined this type in 1967. The type was named for the Refuge site located on the Savannah River that was excavated by Waring.[i]
TEMPER: This type is tempered with sand or grit.
SURFACE DECORATION: Designs are shallow, longitudinal grooves of simple stamping that may have either a parallel arrangement or be in a cross-stamped pattern.
VESSEL FORMS: Known vessel forms include conoidal jars and hemispherical bowls. The rims are straight or occasionally slightly flared with lips that may be squared or rounded and may be angled outward with a beveled appearance. The bases are conoidal or rounded, but are squared when podal supports are present.
CHRONOLOGY: This type dates to the Early Woodland, Refuge III period.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: Refuge pottery is found along the Lower Savannah River and upper Georgia Coast and extends along the coastal plain of South Carolina and into the southeastern coastal sites of North Carolina as mapped by Joseph M. Herbert (2009).
[i] Williams, Mark. Georgia Indian Pottery web site
RESEARCH: This type was defined by Hale G. Smith in 1948 and commented on by John Goggin in 1952.[i]
TEMPER: John Goggin stated that this type is usually tempered with sand in Florida, but in the area of St. Augustine it may be sand or limestone or a combination of the two. Mark Williams reported that the same material, called Altamaha in Georgia, is tempered with grit.
SURFACE DECORATION: Decoration on this type is simple stamping at angles ranging from 90 to 30 degrees to the rim. The design was originally considered to be line-block, but Joseph Caldwell later determined that it was made by successive simple stamping. Cross Simple Stamped and Line Blocked Stamped patterns are two different patterns.
VESSEL FORMS: Known vessel forms include large, deep, round-bottom jars with a constricted area below a flaring rim. Spanish “soup plate” forms are also known. A Spanish type ring foot is found on some forms.
CHRONOLOGY: Smith (1948) gives a date of 1686 for simple stamping with other forms of decoration peaking sometime before that period (Goggin).
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: This type is found in late 17th century mission sites near St. Augustine and northward along the Florida and Georgia coastline. It also occurs in north central Florida and near Tallahassee in the region of the Spanish mission system.
Goggin, John M., Space and Time Perspective in Northern St. Johns Archaeology, Florida, Yale University Press, 1952, p.110
RESEARCH: This was named by Frankie Snow in 1977 in south-central Georgia and was named for the Satilla River.
TEMPER: This is a very early paste mix that was semi-fiber tempered. It was fiber tempered with the addition of sand. The external surface of the sherds is tan or buff. The core color is the same as the exterior.
SURFACE DECORATION: The surface of these vessels was stamped with a wooden paddle carved with parallel grooves. The stamping appears to have been frequently cross-stamped.
VESSEL FORM: Vessel forms are unknown. Sherds are thin, averaging .3cm in contrast to other fiber and sand-tempered pottery that averages .7cm in thickness. Lips are rounded.
CHRONOLOGY: This may represent a transitional series from fiber tempered to sand-tempered pottery and would date from the Late Archaic to the Early Woodland period.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: The type is named for the Satilla River because it was discovered along the sandy mound banks of that river. It is suspected to range through the interior coastal region and perhaps into south central Georgia.
RESEARCH: Antonio Waring used the name Stallings Island Simple Stamped in his discussion of fiber-tempered wares.[i] The use of “Island” in the type name has been dropped in recent years. Waring did not formally define the type, but briefly described it. Ken Sassaman expanded on the type with his work in central Savannah Valley.
TEMPER: This type is tempered with plant fibers, most likely with the shredded fibers of the Palmetto.
SURFACE DECORATION: The simple stamping on this type seemed to be applied through the use of a carved paddle. The surface is stamped with V and U shaped parallel impressions most often in the rim area, but sometimes well down the body of the vessel. Burned-out fiber vermiculations are visible on both the exterior and interior of the vessel. Mark Williams noted the ease in confusing this type with Tom’s Creek Simple Stamped that may have incidental fiber inclusions. Sometimes crude incised lines are made through the stamping.
VESSEL FORMS: Waring noted that this simple stamping was applied to bowl forms that were not present at the Bilbo site. The forms used for simple stamping included carinated bowls with an angular, incurving and sometimes flanged rim.
CHRONOLOGY: This type belongs to the late Archaic, Stallings, and Thom’s Creek phases.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: This type is found throughout the Coastal Plain, lower Piedmont of eastern Georgia, South Carolina, and southeastern North Carolina.
Williams, Stephen, The Waring Papers, The Collected Works of Antonio J. Waring, Jr., Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Vol. 58. P.249
RESEARCH: The St. Johns series of pottery was defined by John Goggin in 1952[i] from his work in sites along the St. Johns River, for which this series is named, and throughout south Florida where the name Biscayne ware had been used by Willey in 1949.
TEMPER: St. Johns pottery is tempered with diatomaceous earth or soft silky clay that has microscopic fresh water sponge spicules in it that act as temper. The sherds of pottery have a soft, chalky texture, referred to as “chalky ware” as early as 1891, so that the ware can be recognized by feel alone. There was an increasing amount of sand in sherds of this type from late St. Johns II sites.
SURFACE DECORATION: Goggin quoted Griffin and Smith by describing this as a broad, parallel, or slightly crossed simple stamped design.
VESSEL FORMS: Goggin does not suggest any known vessel forms for this type.
CHRONOLOGY: This type of St. Johns pottery appeared for a short time during the Middle Woodland, St. Johns Ia period. This time frame is the same as the Englewood and Weeden Island periods, which is the context in which it was recovered from the Englewood Mound.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: This type is known from sites throughout peninsular Florida.
[i] Goggin, John M., Space and Time Perspective in Northern St. Johns Archaeology, Florida, Yale University Press, 1952, p.90-105
RESEARCH: Originally named the “Early” series by Patricia Holden, this was renamed as the Swannanoa series by Keel in 1976 based on his work in Cherokee related sites in North and South Carolina.[i] The type is named after the Swannanoa River.
TEMPER: This type is tempered with large pieces of crushed quartz (56%) or with coarse sand. The tempering material in either case accounts for nearly half of the paste material. The exterior color of the fired paste is red to reddish-brown or light brown.
SURFACE DECORATION: The vessel surface is covered with carelessly applied simple stamping. The groves average 2.5mm in width and are relatively deep, averaging 1.5mm. Many of the sherd examples appear to have been purposely cross-stamped.
VESSEL FORMS: Known vessel forms include large to medium sized conoidal jars and hemispherical bowls. The rims are vertical or slightly inverted and the lips are rounded or flattened, with a very small percentage notched or cord-marked. The bases are conical, some with a nipple-like protrusion; or are jars and are rounded to slightly flattened on bowls.
CHRONOLOGY: This is the earliest Woodland pottery series in western North Carolina, dating to the Early to Middle Woodland period.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: This type is found in western North Carolina, western South Carolina and, perhaps, extreme northeastern Georgia.
Keel, Bennie C., Cherokee Archaeology, A Study of the Appalachian Summit, The University of Tennessee Press, 1976, p. 260
RESEARCH: This type name was originally used by Arthur Kelly in late 1930s from his work in the area of Macon Georgia. Mark Williams gave a synopsis of Kelly’s definition on the Georgia Indian Pottery web site.[i] The type is named for the Vinning site located north of Eatonton in Putnam County, Georgia.
TEMPER: Vinning pottery was sand-tempered. Surface colors range from dark brown to tan to reddish tan.
SURFACE DECORATION: The decoration on this type consists of lightly applied, thin simple stamping. The stamping appears to have been applied using an untwisted string wrapped paddle.
VESSEL FORMS: Vessel forms include large globular jars with straight to flaring rims and rounded lips.
CHRONOLOGY: The type dates to the Late Woodland to Early Mississippian periods.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: The type is known from central Georgia to eastern Alabama.
Williams, Mark. Georgia Indian Pottery web site
RESEARCH: This type was originally defined in the Wheeler Basin on the Tennessee River in north-central Alabama based upon WPA excavations there in the 1930s.[i] The surveys taken by the WPA and TVA were done in the Pickwick, Wheeler and Guntersville basins.
TEMPER: Plant fibers were used in this type as temper, but may also have clay or limestone in addition to, or instead of the fiber.
SURFACE DECORATION: Decoration on this type is simple stamping, presumably much like other simple stamped pottery of this period (see Norwood Simple Stamped and Stallings Simple Stamped types).
VESSEL FORMS: Louis D. Tesar (1980)[ii] suggested that these vessels might have been fashioned after the steatite vessels that preceded them. The Sheeps Bluff site held sherds with straight rims and rounded lips.
CHRONOLOGY: Hollingworth called this type the marker for the Middle Gulf Formational period in northern Alabama dating between 1200 and 500 B.C.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION: Tesar’s estimation of Wheeler distribution include western and northwestern Georgia all of Alabama except southwestern Alabama, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
[i] Williams, Mark. Georgia Indian Pottery web site
[ii] Tesar, Louis D., The Leon County Bicentennial Survey Report: An Archaeological Survey of Selected Portions of Leon County, Florida
