Ceramics

Just like a modern house or boat, La Salle's crew had lots of things that needed to go in cups or pots. On Belle, they used ceramics to store liquids, including medicines, water, and wine.

We've got a lot of ceramics on Belle (we've got a lot of everything on Belle), but they're mostly of only a couple types (again, like many things on Belle, we've got lots of examples of the same sort of artifacts).

There's tin-glazed ceramic, called "faience". It was probably used for medicine.

This is a faience "apothecary" jar.  As you can tell, it was found broken.

There's also lots of Saintonge, a green glazed earthenware.

Here's a piece of Saintonge. It's only a fragment (archaeologists call them "sherds"), but that's much more common than full vessels in the collection!

Saintonge is a common discovery across Europe in medieval archaeological sites, but becomes less common in sites dating after the medieval period.  It might be a little surprising to see this sort of ceramic on a ship from the 17th century (long after the medieval period) - except that La Belle left from the Saintonge region of France, meaning that the people who were purchasing supplies for the expedition were buying their containers locally.

We also have a collection of pipe stems, made out of clay.  Since they're clay, they're considered ceramic and included in with this group of artifacts.  Most of the pipe stems are on exhibit at museums.

Like every sub-collection from La Belle, I've been going through piece by piece, counting what's in every bag.  This is verified against what the excavation and conservation database suggests should be in the collection.  The database is corrected if there are problems.  Since analysis of the ceramics has been done, I also compared the collection to the analyst's spreadsheet, making sure all the artifacts were in the right order and had the right numbers.  Finally, each piece of ceramic is rebagged into the proper archival bags and a new label is printed for it.  Since labeling is the last step, a bag with a new-style label tells everyone who sees it that the contents are correct, and are properly represented in the database (you can see one of these new labels in the picture of Saintonge up above).  Finally, the database is sent back to Austin to be reconciled with the copies kept at the Texas Historical Commission.

From the distribution of the artifacts in the wreck site, researchers can learn where in the ship different types of ceramic were kept and presumably used.  Ceramics used to hold food supplies would likely be stored in a different area of the ship than ceramics used for medicine.  If someone went through your house, what could they learn about your life from where you keep your jars, cans, and medicines?