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Bristol-Glazed Stoneware on Rural Indiana Farms: Effects of Technology Adoption on Consumer Choice

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Abstract

White Bristol slip-glazed utilitarian stoneware occurs on many 19th-century sites in the United States. British and American potteries produced Bristol-glazed pottery, but at different times and in different forms. American potters used Bristol slip glaze after the 1880s, about 50 years after the British developed it. A behavioral approach to technology adoption uses the performance characteristics of stoneware glazes to identify the economic and perceptual characteristics that made Bristol glaze attractive to industrialized potteries then and not earlier. Historical documents clarify the rate and locations of adoptions. Documents also suggest that consumers may have played a role in choosing the white Bristol over the brown Albany-type slip glazes, although both had similar economic benefits. A set of rural Indiana sites shows how the production histories of salt, Albany, and Bristol glaze affected the range of possible consumer-choice and glaze-type representations in archaeological assemblages.

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    Charles D. Cheek

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Cheek, C.D. Bristol-Glazed Stoneware on Rural Indiana Farms: Effects of Technology Adoption on Consumer Choice. Hist Arch 50, 89–109 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377327

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