South Carolina’s Edgefield District: An Early International Crossroads of Clay

This paper examines the antebellum stoneware of Edgefield District, South Carolina as an example of creolization, in which ceramic ideas from three different Old World sources came together to create a distinctly regional pottery tradition still being practiced in Georgia. For those interested in the history of the American South, a promising research pursuit is the formation of a distinctly regional culture and the role in that development played by creolization—the mix of ideas from different groups to create new features.