Red Earthenware: What Archaeological Evidence Reveals about 18th and 19th Century Women’s Untold Labor in the Delaware Valley

• Lily Hearn, Anthropology, University of Delaware

• Lu Ann DeCunzo, Anthropology, University of Delaware

The red earthenware ceramic played an important role in defining the domestic lives of women from the 17th to 19th centuries. During this time, women’s names and livelihoods were generally undocumented in or erased from historic records; archaeological evidence can provide information about the untold labor of women at home and on the farm. The ceramic itself, a low-fired earthenware, was used for many purposes, including but not limited to, cooking, dairying, and food storage. These were generally women’s tasks, and while the wealthiest women had indentured servants or enslaved women performing these tasks for them, most women used these ceramics in some way. Gender and archaeological objects play a significant role in understanding each other, and I demonstrate how, using samples of redware ceramics from 18th and early 19th century archaeological sites in Delaware and Pennsylvania. 

Fragmentary documentation and lack of maker’s marks on red earthenware have resulted in limited information about who produced it, who bought it, and where it was produced. Evolving from Pennsylvania German and English ceramic traditions, redware was popular in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern colonies. By the early 18th century in Philadelphia, large quantities were produced and potters’ apprentices later moved to cities like Wilmington, Delaware to bring their craft to a growing populous. With growing mechanized production in the early to mid 19th century, redware production began to plummet and stoneware and refined ceramics began to take its place in the kitchen and on the farm. Additionally, “separate spheres”, an ideology popular in the 19th century postulated that women and men dominated different, yet argued to be complimentary, spheres; public versus domestic, and that this was due to the so-called inherent natures of the genders. However, during this time of change in ceramics and new socially constructed ideas, more women not only began to work in factories, but also continued to fulfill their domestic role. 

Creating a rapport between gendered labor tasks and the use of redwares has led me to see that what these vessels were used for can equate to supplemental information about who the women were that used them. In my presentation, I intend to demonstrate the connection between gendered labor tasks and the usage of redware as well as draw comparisons between the disregard for redware ceramics and for the lives of women in this period. I will also illustrate how my research led me to learn from these artifacts which allowed me to extrapolate about women’s lives by way of vessel forms and ceramic assemblages. The importance of this research will be an anthropological reexamination of the “separate spheres” ideology induced by material culture research.