Medieval to Modern pottery

Overview

In terms of medieval and later ceramics, South Yorkshire is in a fortunate position when compared to neighbouring counties in that it has a long history of research and a number of published assemblages from known potteries as well as large assemblages from both urban and rural consumer sites. It shares this status with Lincolnshire (Young and Vince 2005), East Yorkshire (Watkins 1987) and West Yorkshire (Cumberpatch 2002a) and is in a much more favourable position than are Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and North Yorkshire where a lack of both large-scale excavation and research means that significant and fundamental issues remain to be addressed. There remain, however, a considerable number of issues outstanding in South Yorkshire and these are outlined in the body of this document.

Time and space preclude the presentation of a general outline of the archaeology of South Yorkshire covering the periods covered by this paper and there has, at the time of writing, been no opportunity for discussions with the authors of those sections of the proposed research framework which cover other aspects of the periods in question. It should also be noted that this document covers only pottery vessels and related objects. It does not cover ceramic building material which, for the purposes of this paper include decorative tiles (Historic England 2011), industrial ceramics related to power supplies (electrical fittings etc), domestic sanitary wares, sewer pipes and related objects or clay tobacco pipes. These classes of ceramics require separate attention.

Pottery and archaeology

The following brief summary of the types of information which pottery can yield are applicable to all of the periods under discussion.

Pottery, while significant in archaeology by virtue of its ubiquity and value as a means of dating sites and calibrating stratigraphic sequences, must be seen more generally as one component of the wider material culture assemblages which frame and constitute (and are constituted by) human society, culture and economy. The study of pottery has to be integrated with studies of other classes of material culture and also with buildings, the use of space and the wider human environment. Considering pottery to be an autonomous phenomenon which can be understood apart from its wider social and economic contexts is a fundamental error and one that leads to an institutionally unhealthy and ultimately misleading solipsism whether this be in the narrow field of archaeological fieldwork and data gathering or in the broader field of archaeological interpretation. This has, de facto if not explicitly, been recognised in the form of the guidelines produced by the main specialist study groups (PCRG/ SGRP/MPRG 2016) and by Historic England (2015, 2017). Unfortunately, while these guidelines have been endorsed by leading institutions and by practitioners, they have yet to be acknowledged in practical terms by curators, contractors or academic institutions, hence the widespread failure to implement either the institutional structures or the working practices recommended within the various documents. This is a general problem but one which is manifested locally as well as nationally.

At one level, some pottery (including, for example, Chinese porcelain and transfer printed refined earthenwares) has an aesthetic appeal which is reflected in the art-historical study of pottery and its collectible status as an objet d’art, but beyond this all pottery has physical characteristics which make it uniquely significant in archaeology. These arise from the properties of clay and its general utility as a malleable and mutable substance which can be permanently transformed by relatively simple pyrotechnology into a hard, durable material.

The physical properties of clay and ceramics include:

• Ubiquity – clay is available almost everywhere although the qualities vary considerably depending on its mode of formation and the material from which it was derived (Rice 1987, Orton, Tyers and Vince 1993);
• Malleability – clay can be used for a wide variety of objects which play an important role in everyday life – and it is everyday life that is the primary object of study in archaeology;
• Breakability – fired clay is generally hard and durable but brittle; it shatters easily and is difficult to repair effectively and it is generally much easier to discard and replace broken or damaged pottery than it is to repair it;
• Durability – once broken, pottery survives well in the ground and although it is susceptible to natural weathering processes, its character as a metamorphic rock, means that, with a few rare exceptions (shell and calcite tempered wares, tin-glazed earthenware) it survives well under almost all environmental conditions other than the most extreme.

Arising from its physical properties, as an artefact pottery is:

• Relatively easy and cheap to make using widely available raw materials;
• Non-perishable so easy to store and transport (although the latter depends to some extent on transport technology);
• Practical – pottery is generally cheap to produce which means that it can be discarded once broken – which makes it useful for archaeology in that it is generally abundant on most types of site;
• Difficult to recycle; although it is possible to repair pottery, it is rarely a practical process and the outcomes are rarely fully successful in terms of returning a vessel to everyday use.

The study of pottery can inform a wide variety of areas of archaeological enquiry which, for the purposes of discussion can be divided into two parts. Both of these are of importance in relation to pottery in South Yorkshire and underlie the research objectives and research projects outlined below.

Firstly there are the areas of life in which pottery played a part in the past and which we study using the pottery evidence as a primary source. These include technology and the economy, the latter in its broadest sense including the organisation of production, circulation, consumption and exchange, but the data derived from ceramic assemblages also offers the possibility of tackling other, less tangible matters such as social status and structure, symbolism and belief, all issues which can be variously subsumed under the headings of habitus (Bourdieu 1990), structuration (Giddens 1984), phenomenology (Cumberpatch 1997) and agency (Jervis 2014, Cumberpatch 2017a).

Secondly there are areas of study within which pottery has proved itself informative which may be termed ‘instrumental’ in that they use pottery in ways quite separate from those for which it was intended. These instrumental (or etic) uses include the construction of typo-chronological frameworks, the chronological calibration of stratigraphic sequences and studies of site formation processes.

Figure 1 shows the ‘life-cycle’ of a pot beginning with a heterogeneous collection of raw materials being brought together for the purposes of production and which then pass through a manufacturing process which results in the creation of finished vessels. Once made, pottery then circulates within the society in one or more ways before inevitably being broken and discarded. Once discarded, the fragments enter a new environment and may eventually enter a new phase of active life as an artefact or as part of an archaeological assemblage. Table 1 gives details of some of the factors involved in the various stages of the life-cycle.

It is in the details of this life cycle that pottery attains its importance as archaeological data. Using the characteristics of individual sherds, of vessels and of assemblages we can draw a wide range of inferences about the society within which the pots were produced and used and about the past lives and social structures which constituted these societies as well as the instrumental issues mentioned above.

The life cycle diagram is intended to break the production, circulation and use of a pot down into basic analytical categories. Each of these categories is susceptible to archaeological analysis using a combination of specific analytical techniques (physico-chemical, typological, statistical) and processes of inference which allow us to make internally consistent and coherent statements about the societies responsible for creating the pots as well as about other matters, including chronology, that are of interest to us as archaeologists and historians and which underlie interpretative accounts of past human societies.

In terms of consumption and use, once made and distributed to households, pottery is used throughout the household; in the dairy, in the kitchen, at the dining table, for domestic lighting, for metal working, for alchemy and early chemistry, for sanitary purposes and so on. The exact use and the ways in which pottery is regarded are, of course, subject to changing perspectives on material culture generally and on the precise socio-economic situations in which pottery is consumed.

From an archaeological point of view a huge range of information is locked up in pottery assemblages and there are a wide range of techniques that can be used to extract this information. The implication of this for studying pottery is of considerable significance at the present time when museums are actively seeking to minimise the size of archaeological archives by insisting on the discard of pottery before deposition or are looking at the destruction of existing archives in order to reduce the need for storage space. This poses a major and very real threat to the future of archaeology in that archives constitute the principal outcome of all archaeological fieldwork and underlie all archaeological interpretation, as well as constituting a key part of the ‘record’ as referred to in ‘preservation by record, a key element in the principle underlying current planning guidance. The crucial practical point is that it is simply impossible to produce a comprehensive pottery report that covers everything of significance about an assemblage – as archaeologists we select the information that is required at any one point in time and an unquantifiable and, to some extent unknowable, proportion remains unexploited until such time as a new study using appropriate methods is undertaken. For this reason, destroying archives inevitably constrains or precludes future research possibilities. If we no longer have the material to examine and re-examine we can do no more than to speculate on its potential inference potential and significance. This reduces archaeology to a process of mere textual exegesis which is constrained by the interests and perspectives of the original analyst and which is circumscribed by the technology available at the time of the writing of the original report. It is a matter of grave concern that current national reviews of archive policy are being undertaken with limited or no archaeological input.

In summary it is possible to draw inferences from pottery assemblages in order to make statements which pertain not only to the pottery itself but also on wider issues related to the society under consideration – whether this be the date of a particular event or to some wider issue about the society in question; trade and exchange, technology, cooking and diet, symbolism and belief. Such studies may involve the application of some particular technique – perhaps scientific, perhaps statistical or it may involve confronting the pottery evidence with data derived from other types of artefact or classes of data; faunal data, archaeobotanical data, metalworking debris, insights into iconography or ideology from art history or social history – or whatever is appropriate in a specific case. In archaeology the most robust and illuminating insights are based on the broadest based body of data possible – that this is severely, possibly fatally, compromised by the current structure and funding of archaeology and particularly that of local and regional museums, is a subject for a future discussion.

Pottery in South Yorkshire c.850AD – 1950AD

A brief outline of the situation in South Yorkshire was included in the handbook which accompanies the South Yorkshire and north Derbyshire regional ceramics reference collection although this dates to 2004 and has not been updated since its compilation (Cumberpatch 2004a, b). While progress has not been dramatic since that date, there have been some useful developments in certain areas and these are included in the following discussion. Time and cost constraints preclude a detailed account of the history of research within the county, useful though this would be to set the scene for the matters discussed below, but the major monographs, reports and articles are listed in the bibliography. Note should also be taken of the research framework for post-Roman ceramic studies in Britain which includes specific reference to South Yorkshire (Irving 2011:34) although this is now slightly out of date in that some of the recommended work has been completed, either wholly or in part.

This document is organised in a series of sections. The first of these covers general matters which are applicable to the entire period from the Late Saxon period to the mid 20^th century. Subsequent sections cover distinct chronological periods and the definition of these periods relates to the wider history of ceramic production and consumption in Britain as a whole. That they do not conform precisely to political or historical periods is, perhaps, unsurprising and has been discussed in more detail elsewhere (Cumberpatch 2003, 2014). In summary the periodisation employed is as follows:

• Late Saxon: Mid 9^th to mid-11^th century
• Medieval: c.1066 – c.1450
• Post-medieval: c.1450 – c.1720
• Early modern: c.1720 – c.1840
• Recent: c.1840 – c.1950

Before outlining the key research priorities for these periods, a number of general issues which are applicable to the entire period under consideration can be highlighted.

These are largely methodological and organisational in nature, as follows:

• A review and revision the regional medieval ceramic type series (Cumberpatch 2004a) is required to update the medieval sections and to add post-medieval and early modern sections. A model for this might be the Worcestershire county type series (https://worcestershireceramics.org/) and in particular the format and content of the on-line reference collection.

• The establishment of closer liaison with the university sector is considered to be an urgent priority, specifically the funding for doctoral and post-doctoral research projects using the substantial archives held by both museums (Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley) and by commercial archaeological contractors. Research should address the wide range of issues which lie beyond the scope of commercial archaeology and its funding as well as being the context in which new entrants to the field of ceramic studies can best learn the various techniques and practices which constitute the field. As part of this it will be necessary to define (in scope, scale and subject matter) suitable projects that can be addressed within the remit of research projects as currently funded in the higher education sector. It is intended that some of the proposed research projects outlined below will contribute to this process.

• The implementation of the recommendations of the current minimum standards document (PCRG/ SGRP/MPRG 2016) is essential in order to reform the organisation of pottery reporting and the structuring of fieldwork and post-excavation analysis.

• Based on the records supplied to the author as part of this project, it is clear that the current HER records require updating to include recent publications and grey literature reports and to remove some earlier, inaccurate records.

• Given the dearth of easily accessible bibliographic resources in South Yorkshire it would be of considerable value if the books and other published material held by Museums Sheffield pertaining to ceramics were to be catalogued and made accessible to researchers and others with an interest the subject. At present, a valuable bibliographic resource remains underused and, for all practical purposes, inaccessible.

Research themes and research projects

In general terms a distinction may be made between overarching research themes and specific research projects. Overarching research themes typically cover areas which involve more than one source of data; thus, for example, ‘trade and communications’ might involve studies of ceramics, glass, metal goods, architectural stone, communications routes and settlement location. In principal, such research themes apply to all of the periods covered in this document although how far they apply in a particular case and their relative significance may vary. The following list covers areas to which ceramics might make a a contribution alone but more usually will involve a broader approach to the issues subsumed under the various headings. Specific research projects (pertaining, for example, to a specific site or group of sites) are presented in the period-specific summaries which follow this general section.

Overarching themes include:

• The spatial, temporal and social organisation of craft and industrial production;

• Changes over time in the organisation of labour, the technology employed in manufacture and the procurement of raw materials and the relationship of such change to social structures and practices;

• The impact of structural change in economic practice subsumed under broad headings such as ‘the industrial revolution’ and the relationship to contemporary social structures;

• The circulation, exchange and marketing of specific goods and objects, including, but not limited to, ceramics;

• Patterns of food preparation and consumption within different social and economic groups and distinctions between them;

• The relationship between material culture (including, but not limited to, ceramics) and society in terms of patterns of material culture use and consumption;

• The discard and disposal of ceramics (and other types of material culture) in relation to wider social perceptions of the character and value of waste and refuse.

• Changes in settlement patterns over time, the growth and decline of individual settlements as mapped by changing patterns of artefact deposition, discard and refuse disposal;

The Late Saxon period

In his review of post-Roman, pre-Conquest pottery in South Yorkshire, Alan Vince has demonstrated convincingly that the area was largely aceramic throughout the Early and Middle Saxon periods (Vince 2003, Vince, Ixer and Young nd). While it is possible that future excavations may add to the very limited ceramic evidence for the 5^th to early/mid 9^th century period, it is highly unlikely, given the extent and intensity of commercial archaeological work in the county, that the general picture is the result of biases in the data. Acknowledging this, research undertaken into this period should, where applicable, consider the nature of aceramic societies, their relationships with neighbouring pottery-using societies and the nature of these relationships in terms of ethnicity and such related cultural factors as might account for radically different attitudes towards material culture.

A limited number of sites have been identified as producing Late Saxon pottery (mid/late 9^th to mid 11^th century), the majority of this material being regional imports including shell tempered ware and Torksey type ware from Lincolnshire (Vince 2003, Cumberpatch 2016a). To date the sites with Late Saxon pottery are: Laughton-en-le-Morthen (Cumberpatch 2006), Sprotborough Gardens (Vince and Steane 2003), Station Road, Arksey (Didsbury pers comm.), Church Street, Bawtry (Cumberpatch 1996), Doncaster (Buckland et al 1989, Vince 2003, Vince et al. nd) and Conisbrough Castle (Cumberpatch 2013, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a). Any further work on or around these sites should take account of their potential importance as local centres of power (political and/or economic) in the Late Saxon period at the project planning stage.

Potential research projects arising from this preliminary review include the detailed study (archaeological and documentary) of the sites identified to date as part of a wider investigation of settlement and governance in Late Saxon South Yorkshire and as background to the impact of the Norman Conquest on local societies. This may increase the number of potential sites of this type which might then be identified as of particular importance and of high priority in terms of future fieldwork whether research-orientated or in response to threats from development.

The medieval period (c.1066 – c.1450)

 From around the late 11^th century, South Yorkshire saw the rapid development of a local pottery industry with both a regional and an international reach. This has been relatively well documented but much of the fundamental work is now out of date and requires revision and updating in the light of more recent work. The industry appears to have begun in Doncaster, perhaps in response to the construction of the first Norman castle, with short-lived hand-made production (Hallgate A1 – E, Hallgate C, Frenchgate wares; Buckland et al 1979, Hayfield 1984, Cumberpatch et al 1998-9, Cumberpatch and Sydes 2004) and to have continued with wheel-thrown production during the 12^th and 13^th centuries (Hallgate A, Hallgate B). At the same time Gritty wares, probably originating in West Yorkshire, appear in Doncaster and the northern part of the county, together with other regional imports, notably Stamford-type ware (Cumberpatch 2002b, 2007a). While Sheffield and Doncaster and sites in rural South Yorkshire have seen investigations on a significant scale, Barnsley and Rotherham remain poorly known and are in need of further detailed research.

From the later 13^th or early 14^th century pottery production appears to have moved out of Doncaster (probably in response to rising urban land values) and to have been focussed both outside the county in the case of Humberware (Hayfield and Grieg 1990, Hayfield 1992) and in the Don Valley in the case of the Coal Measures wares. To date, two potteries are known to have existed in the Don Valley (Firsby Hall Farm and Green Lane Rawmarsh; Hayfield and Buckland 1989, Cumberpatch 2004a, 2004b) but the possibility that others may remain unidentified cannot be ruled out, particularly in the Conisbrough Parks area. These industries may continue into the very early post-medieval period but do not appear to have survived beyond the 16^th century. The Conisbrough court rolls contain interesting references to potters involved in legal disputes, notably over access to clay, and usefully supplement the archaeological data. More recently excavation in Sheffield led to the identification of waste from pottery manufacture close to the modern city centre and the definition of a medieval Sheffield ware (Cumberpatch 2011a, Vince 2011). This material remains poorly dated and is known only from the Norfolk Street site and the Butcher collection of material from Sheffield Castle held in Weston Park Museum (Cumberpatch 2017b; see also Cumberpatch 1999, 2002c). A general survey of medieval pottery from excavations in Sheffield is included in the, as yet incomplete, report on the Inner Ring Road sites (Cumberpatch 2014c: Appendix 2).

The key issues to be addressed in future research include:

• A full revision of the Doncaster pottery sequence to take account of work since 1979 (Buckland et al 1979, 1989), and the problems associated with the existing scheme. Work on this is in progress (Cumberpatch, 2016b, in prep 1) but a lack of time and resources means that it has yet to be finalised and prepared for publication. It will include both a re-dating of the principal early medieval (late 11^th to late 13^th century) wares manufactured within Doncaster and the drafting of a series of horizons similar to those proposed for Lincoln (Young and Vince 2005). A preliminary scheme was proposed in the report on the excavations at Church Walk (Cumberpatch 2007a) but this was limited in scope and requires expansion to incorporate data from other sites in Doncaster and the surrounding area;

• The dating and significance of Yorkshire Gritty wares and related gritty wares with a view to establishing their geographical origins and chronological range as well as their relationship to the Doncaster medieval pottery industries and the regionally significant Buff Gritty / Buff Sandy ware industry which dominates the ceramic record in West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and neighbouring areas;

• The petrographical and chemical characterisation of Stamford type wares from sites in South Yorkshire (including Doncaster and Barnburgh Hall) to establish their relationship with known Stamford ware potteries (Stamford and Pontefract) or with suspected but as yet unknown potteries in the Nottingham/Derby area (Cumberpatch, in Roberts et al 2013);

• The identification (at the desktop assessment or evaluative excavation stage) of sites which might include medieval phases and the preparation of project designs and written schemes of investigation to include the full excavation of burgage plots with a view to obtaining sealed groups of pottery from pits and other cut features. There should be no repeat of the situation in High Street Doncaster (Cumberpatch 2004c, Archaeological Services WYAS 2008: Figure 3) in which the excavation strategy was focussed on burgage plot boundaries rather than on the cut features within the burgage plots themselves, thus missing a rare opportunity to obtain significant and useful pottery assemblages from sealed contexts;

• While some form of publication (either in full or in the form of grey literature reports) has been achieved for many sites investigated in the county, a number of sites remain outstanding. These include Tickhill Castle and the medieval phases of Sheffield Manor, both of which remain largely unknown even within the profession. The assessment of the pottery assemblages should be considered a priority as should efforts to obtain funding for full reports and publication at an appropriate level. A model might be the recent work on the Armstrong and Butcher archives undertaken by Sheffield University, Wessex Archaeology and the author to inform ongoing work on the site of Sheffield Castle (Cumberpatch 2017b). Extensive excavation and survey undertaken by Sheffield University, in partnership with Hull and Cardiff Universities and local heritage groups as part of the Brodsworth Community Archaeology Project has generated considerable archives which have yet to be the subject of a detailed report. Liaison with Sheffield University and the provision of appropriate funding from the University is required to bring these sites to archive-level reporting and eventual publication;

• The proposed HS2 railway line will run close to the Conisbrough Parks area which may, as a result be subject to severe impacts related to the HS2 railway scheme and it is essential that adequate provision should be made for survey, excavation and, most significantly, the subsequent archiving of assemblages in advance of the construction of the railway line and ancillary facilities, including temporary facilities required for engineering purposes.

• The study of the distribution of pottery and its relationship to larger social and economic structures has been somewhat neglected since the early work of Moorhouse (1978, 1983) and Le Patourel (1968, 1979) despite the significant role played by pottery in trade and exchange. The geographical position of South Yorkshire, the role played in international trade by Doncaster and Bawtry during the medieval period and the widespread distribution of South Yorkshire wares all suggest that this is a subject worthy of further research.

The post-medieval period (c.1450 – c.1720)

As noted above, pottery dating to the post-medieval and later periods was excluded from the regional ceramics reference collection project although a certain amount of material from pre-existing reference collections was incorporated into the collection, without the benefit of the physico-chemical analysis or photographic documentation that was part of the medieval component. It would be highly desirable to extend the reference collection to include later periods, particularly the post-medieval, in the light of the substantial assemblage of 17^th century wares from the Butcher excavations on the site of Sheffield Castle and the possible contribution of material from the site of Sheffield Manor.

In more general terms the author has drawn attention to a number of aspects of post-medieval pottery manufacture and consumption which require consideration in order to render pottery data suitable for consideration within wider archaeological and historical discourse (Cumberpatch 2003). These fall somewhere between the overarching research issues noted above and more site- or area-specific research themes. They can be summarised as follows:

• The significance of the changes in the colour of pottery between the late medieval and early post-medieval periods;
• The significance of the changes in vessel forms from the standardised range typical of the medieval period to the rather different range in the post-medieval period;
• The relationship between pottery and other classes of material culture;
• The relationship between social changes (at the levels of both structure and practice) and changes in material culture;
• The consideration of the whole period between c.1450 and c.1720) during which a series of changes took place in ceramics and which can be considered as forming part of the genealogy of the Georgian Order (Johnson 1996) characteristic of the early modern period, discussed below

Once these issues have been tackled, we may be able to begin to move towards a synthesis of archaeological and socio-economic historical approaches to the later medieval and post-medieval periods, particularly the question of the transition from medieval to post-medieval wares during the 15^th century. In general, it should be noted that this period is poorly represented in South Yorkshire (in comparison to earlier and later periods) and requires further work at the general level.

Specific research projects include the following:

• The period between the decline of the Coal Measures ware industry (described above) and the appearance of the country potteries in the 18^th century (described below) remains poorly understood in ceramic terms and a thorough review of the period is required in order to establish the sources of pottery in use during this critical period;

• Doncaster Museum holds a collection of Cistercian ware pottery ostensibly from Pothills, Armthorpe but which might in fact have been obtained from a site in the centre of Doncaster (Robinson, pers comm) during redevelopment work in the 1950s/1960s. A review of this assemblage would be of value in establishing whether if does in fact represent waste from manufacturing and and as such represents a hitherto undocumented phase of pottery manufacture in Doncaster. More broadly, it raises the question of the relationships that may have existed with the two known production sites at Wrenthorpe (West Yorkshire; Moorhouse and Roberts 1992, Moorhouse and Slowikowski 1992) and Ticknall (Derbyshire; Spavold and Brown 2005). Petrographic and chemical analysis would be of considerable value in this project, given the visual similarity of Cistercian ware and Blackware fabrics from different potteries;

• Midlands Purple ware; this category of pottery is poorly defined and dated although it forms a significant proportion of excavated assemblages (see, for example, Cumberpatch 1996). Work is required to identify and characterise specific fabrics and to locate the potteries responsible for its manufacture;

• Early Brown Glazed Coarseware; the review of pottery from the Butcher excavations on the site of Sheffield Castle (Cumberpatch 2017b) identified Early Brown Glazed Coarseware as an important component of the 17^th century assemblages from the site. Highly distinctive in terms of its fabric, no source is currently known for this type of utilitarian pottery and further work is required to distinguish fabric sub-types and to identify their possible origins;

• The review of the Armstrong and Butcher material from Sheffield Castle identified a number of issues with the archive which need to be addressed if it is to become a useful part of the Museum’s collections. These are included in the author’s report on the assemblage (Cumberpatch 2017b) and could form part of a museum-based project suitable for a post-graduate master’s degree.

The early modern period (c.1720 – c.1840)

The early modern period saw the rise of industrial scale pottery manufacture in Britain generally and in Yorkshire in particular, the importance of which has been overshadowed, at least in archaeology, by a focus on the Staffordshire pottery industry. A good deal of work on the Yorkshire pottery industry, including that located in South Yorkshire, has been undertaken by historians and collectors working outside the commercial and academic structures which have dominated the archaeological study of medieval and later pottery production and use. This work includes the very substantial contributions of Heather Lawrence (1974), John Griffin (2001, 2012), Alwyn and Angela Cox (2001), Edwards and Hampson (2005) and that of regular contributors to the newsletters and journals of the Northern Ceramic Society and the Friends of Blue (see, for example, Oliver 2015, Tomlinson and Tomlinson 2014). This work tends to focus on the formal tablewares and the industrial pottery factories rather on vernacular and utilitarian wares which continued to be produced in smaller-scale ‘country potteries’. The author’s contribution to the study of pottery in this period (Cumberpatch 2014b) attempted to redress the balance by looking specifically at the production and consumption of vernacular tablewares and utilitarian wares, drawing on the results of recent excavations on both potteries and consumer sites. There remains a good deal of work to be done on this crucial period, as outlined elsewhere (Cumberpatch 2014b: 93-4).

Specific areas requiring attention include:

• The establishment closer links between archaeology and the collector/historian community to maximise the potential offered by the closer integration of documentary, artefactual and archaeological research;

• The expansion the regional ceramics reference collection to include examples of wares from the known potteries at Sheffield Manor, Bolsterstone, Silkstone, Midhope and Rockingham, to include petrographic and chemical analysis and the full characterisation of the fabrics at the macroscopic, microscopic and elemental level (Beswick 1978, Cumberpatch 2004d, 2010, 2011b, 2012, 2014b, White 2012);

• Further research into known and suspected country potteries, notably Silkstone which has been the subject of just one small excavation (Dungworth and Cromwell 2006, Cumberpatch 2004d) and Rockingham where attention has focused on the later manufacture of formal tablewares but where the industrial phase of manufacture was preceded by a country pottery producing vernacular tablewares (Cox and Cox 2001: Chapter 1);

• Petrographic and chemical analysis to reveal more about the technology of production, the sources of clay and the deliberate manipulation of clay and slip bodies to produce intended outcomes by potters working within the vernacular tradition;

• The role of the industries which supported the pottery industry including transport for clay and other raw materials as well as the finished products (canals and river-borne transport, turnpike roads, railways), flint mills, fuel sources (charcoal, coal) etc;

• The links between pottery production and the international export trade via Doncaster, Bawtry and Hull (see Griffin 2001: 38-9, 221-224);

• Documentary research designed to illuminate the relationships between potters and local entrepreneurs, the employment of local and immigrant potters and the networks of association and familial connections within and between the pottery and related industries (notably the glass industry as discussed elsewhere; Cumberpatch 2014) and the distribution networks responsible for the marketing and circulation of the pottery (cf. Spavold and Brown 2005);

• The detailed study of specific ceramic assemblages in order to elucidate the contexts in which vernacular tablewares and formal tablewares were used and were not used and the connections between them. Much current writing, whether in the collector literature or social history, tends to focus on the rise of formal tablewares while the role of vernacular tablewares has been overlooked and often entirely neglected (see, for example, Richards 1999, Kowaleski Wallace 1997, Vickery 2009). A preliminary attempt to document the complementary roles of these two components of domestic ceramic assemblages has been presented elsewhere (Cumberpatch 2014b:89 – 93) but this simply illustrates the potential of the data and further work is required to develop the ideas presented in that paper;

• Chinese porcelain in 18^th and 19^th century South Yorkshire: to date many early modern and recent sites have produced small quantities of Chinese and other porcelain but there has been no co-ordinated effort to investigate this component of ceramic assemblages, in large part due to the specialised nature of porcelain studies and the lack of readily available comparative data. A dedicated study of the material will identify genuine Chinese imports and European or English porcelain with a view to contributing to the study of households and the aspirations of those who sought out luxury goods of this type;

• In order to understand the consumption, use and discard of pottery, we need not only to make greater use of documentary data (including probate inventories) but also to undertake contextually sensitive analysis and reanalysis of excavation records and artefactual archives with the explicit aim of resolving issues around site formation processes, particularly on urban sites. This will require a return to traditional methods of post-excavation analysis including the use of the Harris Matrix and the practical principles set out in MAP II (English Heritage 1991) and by the pottery study groups (PCRG/SGRP/MPRG 2016) which have been abandoned by some commercial archaeology firms apparently in order to cut costs at the post-excavation stage. The very limited cost savings resulting from this largely unacknowledged decline in the quality of archaeological fieldwork are far outweighed by the loss of detail in the grey literature reports and the fundamental compromise of the cardinal principle of preservation by record (Cumberpatch and Blinkhorn 1998, 2008, Cumberpatch and Roberts 2010, Cumberpatch 2015b). The re-establishment of minimum standards across the industry is an essential pre-requisite for moving on from mere description to interpretation and understanding and to re-establishing archaeology as a research-based discipline and not merely an adjunct of the development/financial sector of the wider economy. It should go without saying that the curation and retention of complete archives in museums is of outstanding importance in this regard.

Although the distinction between the early modern and recent periods is a critical one in terms of understanding the development of the pottery industry and its markets, from the point of view of future archaeological research in South Yorkshire there are significant areas in which the two periods can be taken together as there are considerable areas of overlap, particularly where consumer sites are concerned. These will be covered in more detail in the following section.

The recent period (c.1840 – c.1950)

The late 18^th to early 19^th century period saw the rapid decline of the country potteries and the general replacement of vernacular tablewares with a range of cheap and colourful refined earthenwares which, together with stoneware cooking vessels suitable for use in coal-fired domestic kitchen ranges (Walter 1999) and Brown Glazed Coarseware pancheons come to dominate 19^th century ceramic assemblages, something very well attested on both industrial and domestic sites excavated in Sheffield and Rotherham. The choice of 1840 to mark the start of the ‘Recent’ period is based on the move from Pearlware to Whiteware but is less satisfactory than earlier period divisions given the lack of a close connection to economic or structural change within the pottery industry or society more generally. An alternative date would be the end of vernacular tableware production at the end of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th century but this is currently uncertain and requires further work. Overall there is probably no entirely satisfactory date given the complexity of the pottery industry between the late 18^th and early/mid 19^th centuries.

The Yorkshire pottery industry appears to have declined during the later 19^th century and there may some evidence of this in the form of changing patterns of procurement as seen on sites in Sheffield in the form of an increased number of maker’s marks relating to Staffordshire manufactures although at the time of writing this is based on impressionistic data only.

Potential research topics include:

• The supply of pottery to Sheffield and the changing roles of the Yorkshire and Staffordshire potteries in the supply of tableware to the inhabitants of the city. In principal this could apply equally to Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley but at the time of writing the data from Sheffield is far more abundant than that from other towns in the county. This may change if significant development takes place outside Sheffield and new, large assemblages of pottery are forthcoming;

• The role of pottery (and other types of material culture) in the habitus of 19^th century households in South Yorkshire. This might include the analysis of ceramic and other assemblages with reference to data from probate inventories and other sources of information (such as insurance records pertaining to the 1864 Dale Dyke Dam disaster) to investigate class, ethnic and other distinctions through the 19^th and into the early 20^th century;

• The significance of pottery as a marker of changes in domestic technology, notably the coal fired kitchen range, in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries (Pennell 2016: 65-68) and the impact of such technologies on the demand for ‘over proof’ cooking wares including Brown Salt Glazed Stoneware (Walter 1999) and cane-coloured refined earthenwares.

• The local production of utilitarian wares in Yorkshire continued into the mid-20^th century (Anderson 1963-5) but this has barely been investigated archaeologically. While utilitarian ware is generally of only limited interest to collectors, a number of sites are listed and described (using documentary sources) by Griffin (2012) and the potential for archaeological investigation remains considerable;

• Pottery, agriculture and horticulture: the role of ceramics in gardens, allotments and on farms: this broad topic spans commercial farming, domestic gardens and allotments and decorative gardens up to and including elite gardens. Farmers and market gardeners required animal feeders (troughs and specialised items such as chicken feeders) and, in some cases, highly specialised ceramics for forcing rhubarb and other crops while domestic gardeners and allotment holders constituted a market for flowerpots, planters and other items both utilitarian and decorative. Sheffield is noted for the early development of allotments, as discussed by Flavell (2005), something that may be reflected in the incidence of horticultural wares in ceramic assemblages from the city;

• Upper middle class and elite gardeners formed a market for decorative ceramics and garden furniture, a subject somewhat neglected since the work of Currie (1993). Excavations at in the walled garden at Brodsworth Hall have produced a large quantity of primarily utilitarian wares connected with the production of exotic fruit and vegetables in heated greenhouses.

Region-specific issues

Sheffield

Excavations in Sheffield have been extensive and the following research topics relate to both the early modern and recent sites excavated in the city. The archaeology of Sheffield is, with the exception of a few major sites (Sheffield Manor, Sheffield Castle) and rare survival of medieval features beneath later developments, largely the archaeology of the early modern and recent periods. Large scale and extensive excavations undertaken between the late 1990s and 2008 were sufficient to establish the character of sites and artefactual assemblages from across the city. Unfortunately this phase of investigation was characterised by a set of very rigid approaches to the archaeology which, lacking a self-reflective element, failed to maximise the research returns from the considerable commercial investment in the investigations. Most notably, and with specific reference to the pottery assemblages, a failure to consider the taphonomic issues and the importance of site formation processes led to a lack of understanding of the nature of the sites which has inhibited subsequent interpretation. In addition at least one key sites have been published without an adequate pottery report (Andrews 2015) while others have yet to be published (see, for example, Cumberpatch 2014c, although this is but one of many unpublished projects). Some of these issues were outlined in a short conference paper (Cumberpatch 2005a) but institutional and structural problems within the archaeological process followed by the closure of the unit which had undertaken most of the work (ARCUS) resulted in a lack of opportunity for innovative analysis and interpretation, meaning that a great deal of work remains to be undertaken in order to understand the archaeology of the city. Much of this should be considered as a priority in terms of research and future excavations within the city should begin with an understanding that taphonomy is the key to understanding the archaeology of the city rather than attempting to deal with it by means of terms such as ‘made-ground’ or ‘make-up layers’. Given this, the research priorities for Sheffield can, to some extent, be considered as distinct from priorities in the rest of the county. They include:

Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley

In contrast to Sheffield, far less work has been undertaken in any of the other three towns in the county, at least as regards the early modern and recent periods (although see, for example, Cumberpatch 2004e, 2007b). In the county more generally more archaeological research is required to understand the relationships between the industrial pottery factories and the country potteries and to set the historical and documentary information in a wider context.

As noted above, better relationships are required between archaeologists and the collector community in order to maximise the results from future archaeological excavations on the sites of 18^th and 19^th century pottery factories.

Specific research and publication projects include:

Research Questions

The below represent some selected specific questions from the document above. They should not be considered exhaustive and the full text can be consulted for a an in depth discussion of research directions and priorities.

Bibliography

Websites

• Prehistoric Pottery Research Group (PCRG): http://www.pcrg.org.uk/
• Study Group for Roman Pottery (SGRP): http://www.romanpotterystudy.org/
• Medieval Pottery Research Group (MPRG): http://www.medievalpottery.org.uk/index.htm
• Medieval Pottery Research Group Bibliography: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/mprg_eh_2010/  
• Reference collections in the UK: http://www.medievalpottery.org.uk/refcoll.htm
• Northern Ceramic Society (NCS) : http://www.northernceramicsociety.org/