Colonoware

Colonoware is a low-fired earthenware pottery tradition associated with early Africans, African Americans, and Indigenous communities living along the Eastern Seaboard of North America and in the Caribbean. This fragment is 9 inches in diameter at the rim, with one small loop handle (.8 inches in diameter) visible. Considerable charring in several areas suggests the pot was well used over a long period of time, most likely as a cooking pot. The fragment is part of the National Park Service collection at Independence National Historical Park, where it was uncovered in 2001 during archaeological excavations. Was this colonoware brought to Philadelphia from the Caribbean, by an enslaved person or a free person of color? How did it arrive here? Was it constructed by someone within the city and used daily?