Life Beyond the Boundaries: Constructing Identity in Edge Regions of the North American Southwest

Abstract

nants of exterior walls, fire boxes, and sections of the kiln floor. The kiln has an exterior diameter of 5.0 meters and an interior diameter of 3.76 meters. There were likely four fire boxes. Buchner suggests that this was likely a beehive kiln with a low, domed roof. Other than one grainy photograph from a later pottery in Benton, Buchner does not state any evidence for a beehive kiln and against a bottle kiln. Bottle kilns were certainly common in the latenineteenth-century stoneware industry. For this reviewer, there is not sufficient evidence to argue either beehive or bottle kiln. Chapter 6 thoroughly documents the artifacts recovered. Naturally, the focus of this chapter is stoneware vessels, but Buchner also provides excellent descriptions of the kiln hardware and construction materials. The typical product was slipped with an Albany or similar slip on both the interior and exterior. About one-fifth of the vessels were instead salt-glazed on the exterior and Albany-slipped on the interior. Some of the salt-glazed examples also had been cobalt decorated with free-hand (majority) or stenciled (minority) motifs. Based on sherd counts, jugs (n=753), jars/churns (n=573), and bowls/ milk pans (n=206) were the most commonly produced forms. The final chapter addresses a series of research questions that drove the investigations. Buchner recognizes the importance of the Howe Pottery as the last of the “traditional potteries” in the Benton area, and contrasts the Howe works with two, subsequent, industrial potteries in Benton. The graphics are generally effective, although some color plates of the kiln remains and sherds would have been better than the black-and-white photographs provided. It would have been helpful to provide a scale on Figure 104, drawings of representative vessel forms. The report would have benefitted from a broader perspective on the spread of potters, kiln technologies, and glazes through the greater Southeast. The report begins rather abruptly, basically stating “and then the first pottery was established in Arkansas.” Several state-level volumes – including Georgia, South Carolina North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware – and recent literature on the expanding stoneware frontier would have allowed Buchner to interpret the Howe shop within a broader perspective. He might also have been able to identify possible sources for specific traits (e.g., was the cobalt-stenciling motif influenced by a potter who formerly worked in southwestern Pennsylvania?). I also found one more aspect of the report disappointing. Having published on the Alkaline to Albany transition in Georgia, I would have liked to have seen a more fully considered discussion of the Howe adoption of Albanylike slip. The decision was not a simple question of the slip becoming available, so it was used. The shift to Albany-like slip required changes to the overall potterymaking process, the outlay of cash to purchase the slip, and more labor to slip the vessels. The Howe Pottery captured the period of change from salt to slip, and I feel that Buchner missed an opportunity to address a major panregional issue. Credit must be given to Buchner and the Arkansas Archaeological Survey. Their publication of this report as part of the Research Series assures greater exposure and use of this work. Furthermore, at a time when most publications are prohibitively costly, the Survey offers this study at the bargain price of $20.00. I await the day that an ambitious graduate student undertakes a GIS-based analysis of the regional landscape of traditional potting. By linking together thorough shop-specific studies, one would be able to create a timeprogressive animation of how specific potters, kiln types, glazes and slips, and vessel forms progressed across the country. Buchner has provided a valuable dataset on the Howe Pottery and related Benton-area potteries, more pieces in the mosaic of traditional pottery-making. The very minor criticisms aside, Buchner has created a thorough and informative study of a pottery operation just before the demise of the rural, utilitarian stoneware potter in the southeastern United States. The report warrants inclusion on the shelves of all who study American folk pottery and those who are students of the historical archaeology of Arkansas and the greater Southeast.