This archeometric study analyzed local clay deposits at the Ingels Family Farm, settled in the Early Nineteenth Century in Bourbon County Kentucky. The redware pottery made on site was bartered and sold in the region, and the clay deposits were also used to make the bricks that constructed the 1820 Ingels family residence, still extant as of May 2026. Numerous materials characterization techniques including XRD, XRF, DTA/TGA, Spectroscopy, wet chemical analysis, and SEM were used to determine the characteristics of the local clay deposit and the identifying characteristics of the redware. The study also tested the wares to determine an approximate firing range, which was consistent with the requirements of low-to-mid fired earthenware. This study was done using archaeological materials from a previous archaeological investigation of the farm, but new material was added with the assistance the USDA Soil Survey Office in Kentucky, who drilled core samples for the project in Spring 2012.
As I have previously shown, Alexandre Brongniart established a coherent science of ceramics. By the mid-nineteenth century, Brongniart had popularised the term "la céramique" as a widely-applicable name for the field of pottery and porcelain making, and other related arts. In the Twentieth Century, ceramic manufacturing became increasingly technical. The inclusive field of artisans and industrialists that Brongniart had once envisioned was fracturing. Voices called for the separation of pottery making from experimental, industrial ceramics and the meaning of the term “ceramics” was hotly debated. Numerous etymologies were traced, but, as the predominant language of science transferred from French to English, none of the twentieth-century authors recognized Brongniart’s key role in the invention of the term. Critically, this language debate coincided with and reflected the global politics, nationalism, and warfare of the first half of the Twentieth Century.
Taking on the task of ordering the sciences related to pottery and clay-based objects, natural historian and porcelainier Alexandre Brongniart sought a new way of describing the ancient practice. Early in his forty-seven-year career as director of the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, Brongniart developed a research center for the advanced study of pottery and porcelain making. Brongniart recognized that an inclusive and distinct term for the field was necessary, but it had to be introduced carefully, so that it was welcomed rather than rejected as presumptuous. Through close reading of Brongniart’s writings, as well as contemporary periodicals and the texts of other authors, the development of the word “ceramic” – originally introduced by Brongniart and his associates in French as “la céramique” – can be traced closely. I show that this was a deliberate, methodical, and years-long effort to create a durable, comprehensive term.