Expansion Planned for the Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland website

The Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland website, created by the lab in 2002, was designed as an introduction to artifact types commonly found at archaeological sites in Maryland. This online resource (www.jefpat.org/diagnostic/index.htm), which uses the extensive MAC Lab collections to create accessible identification tools and resource materials, has proven invaluable for archaeologists, curators, students, and anyone interested in Maryland and Mid-Atlantic history. The site uses definitions from the standard references and presents multiple images of artifacts to facilitate correct identifications.

Currently, the website covers the full range of ceramics from pre- and post-contact Native American sites, as well as ceramics from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial sites. Thanks to funding from the Maryland Historical Trust, the website will soon be expanded to include post-colonial ceramics. Lab staff, working with the assistance of noted British and American ceramics scholar George L. Miller, will use a combination of ceramics from tightly-dated post-colonial archaeological assemblages in the MAC Lab collections, and primary source materials, such as merchant’s account books, potter’s pattern books, invoices, and price lists, to create the dating tools for the website.

The final product for this project would be an expansion of the Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland website to include English and American ceramics from the last quarter of the eighteenth century through circa 1850. This expansion will not only contain digital images and essays that provide date ranges for the most commonly found ceramic ware types (for example, cc, white granite, china glaze) and decorative motifs (painted, printed, and edged) during this period, but also essays that will place ceramic analysis within the larger economic and social context of English and American history. Incorporating diagnostic tools for this period will transform the website into a more comprehensive source with national relevance.

It is anticipated that additions to the website will begin in the late spring of 2008.

New - The JPPM Research Library catalog is now available on-line!

New - Please check out the MAC Lab's "Curator's Choice" Page!