Contextualizing Transferware from Drayton Hall

Lecturer: Corey Heyward Sattes, Wexler Curatorial Fellow, Archaeology, Drayton Hall Preservation Trust

Description: The South Flanker well site at Drayton Hall, an 18th-century plantation estate north of Charleston, South Carolina, provides a unique opportunity to examine the intentional refuse of those living on the property.  Additionally, the contained nature of this context allows for us to observe relatively clear phases of trash deposits, each associated with different generations owning the house. The recovered transferware from this assemblage, and the research acquired in the Transferware Collectors Club database, has been invaluable for dating these contexts. This talk will examine the range of the recovered transferware ceramics, methods of analysis, and interpretations of their role in market accessibility and household use.

Speaker bio: Corey A. H. Sattes received her B.A. in both Archaeology and Art History from the College of Charleston, and her M.A. in Anthropology from George Washington University. Sattes currently works as an archaeologist and the Wexler Curatorial Fellow at Drayton Hall Preservation Trust, where she curates and catalogs the legacy archaeological collection at Drayton Hall using the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS). She researches the material culture of Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and African Americans in the southeastern United States during and following the colonial period. She focuses primarily on ceramics manufactured and used by Native Americans and African descendants, namely colonoware. Sattes also specializes in artifact photography and digitization.