Moravian ceramics on St Croix, the Virgin Islands
Year: 2018

The island of St Croix in the Caribbean Sea, today a part of the United States Virgin Islands, is a cultural melting pot of descendants of European settlers, a native population and African slaves. The English arrived in 1631, after which followed episodes of Spanish and French occupation until 1733, when the island was sold to the Danish West India Company. In 1734, Moravian missionaries arrived on the island and they soon established three missionary stations in order to evangelize the African slaves who had arrived on board the Danish ships. The missionaries, the so called Moravian Brethren, or Herrnhuter BrEURudergemeinde, had come from Herrnhut in Saxony, Germany, and over the course of the following years built more mission stations on the nearby island of St Thomas. Over the past decades archaeological excavations and surveys were conducted on St Croix, which resulted in a collection of European artefacts that were traded or came along with the settlers. In this short paper, we present slipwares connected to the Moravian Brethren and their plantations at Friedensthal, located west of the present city of Christiansted, and one of three Moravian missions established on St Croix. The island was home to over 200 sugar plantations, on which African slaves worked and were spiritually ministered to by the Moravians. A group of about 50 slip decorated ceramic sherds salvaged in the late 1970s during construction work at various sites are available for study by the authors. The slipware sherds belong to plates, bowls and jugs dating to the 18th century. Recent analysis of imported ceramics excavated at St Croix has revealed Moravian pottery amongst the archaeological assemblage recovered at the sugar plantation Estate Lower Bethlehem in the centre of St Croix. The pottery was identified as originating from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, where Moravian potters produced slip decorated redwares. The results are based on visual identification and a comparison of both the Pennsylvania and St Croix assemblages based upon morphology and decoration. Written sources from 1759 testify to the export of ceramics from Bethlehem to St Croix. Ten of the 50 sherds from St Croix were chosen for an ICP MS analysis in an attempt to determine their origin  The results of the analysis were compared with the results of a set of considerable reference material from present day Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium (as the most likely origin of the vessels) The data was also compared with the data from previously analysed and published ceramic material from Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The results show that three fragments originate from vessels made of clays from the area around Duingen and Coppengrave, in the German states of Lower Saxony  The area around Coppengrave was a well known production centre of late medieval and modern ceramics. Sherds in Figure 1b and c are light red in colour, with 1b from the Mount Welcome plantation showing a bird and the number '179_' in its centre, applied with yellow and green glaze on a white slip. Sherd in Figure 1f is notably darker in fabric and also in the brownish glaze. Three other sherds  match with the ceramic data from Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) and one fragment  that from Bethabara (North Carolina) The Northern German ceramic vessels must have been transported along the River Weser, the main waterway for ceramics from this well known pottery