Nineteenth-century Potter's Kiln, Rome, New York

Then and Now: Archeology at Fort Stanwix

Archeology Home		Potter's Kiln During the survey at Fort Stanwix, archeologists found evidence for a potter's kiln including an actual brick from the kiln itself. A potter named Norman Judd is recorded as working on a lane off of James Street, which could match what we found. Judd was active in Rome from 1813 to about 1850.
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The strange objects you see in the image above are from a nineteenth-century potter's kiln. They were used to keep the pots from touching each other during firing. Without these objects -- called stilts -- the pots would stick together. These were made from pieces of clay and just squeezed into shape as needed. You can still see the finger marks pressed into the clay when the stilts were made, preserved forever when they were fired. Most of these are stoneware, a kind of pottery that holds water, but there were also ones made of redware, like a flower pot, which does not hold water.
		This broken brick is from a potter's kiln. The surface to the left would have been inside the kiln. It is coated with a thick layer of yellowish-white glaze from the firing process. The brick just below the glaze is burned black from the repeated firing of the kiln. The black portion is visible where the glaze chipped off at the bottom center of the photo.