These jugs are one of the most common ceramic forms that we find in James Fort contexts.
They were made in Frechen, Germany,
a little town just about seven miles outside of Cologne.
They're brown salt-glazed stoneware.
In the year 1600, when the population of London was only 200,000,
over a 100,000 of these were shipped via merchants in Amsterdam to London
and they are the preferred drinking vessel for consuming wine, beer,
because of their sturdiness,
and they are impervious to liquid.
You can see that they are embellished with a mask of a man
and they're called Bartmann jugs which means "bearded man" in German.
Many are embellished with medallions
which are the coat-of-arms of families of nobility, royalty,
but also cities and countries.
For instance, this little Bartmann jug has the coat of arms of Elizabeth I
and it was recovered last summer
when we were excavating the blockhouse in the fort extension.
Many of the more intact jugs come from wells.
It's thought that they were probably trying to dip for water
and the jugs dropped to the bottom of the wells
and we were able to retrieve many of them in an almost-intact condition.
The medallions are coat-of-arms of royalty.
This is the coat-of-arms of James I of England
and we have the coat-of-arms of Amsterdam.
This is one of the more common coats-of-arms that we find in our assemblages
because the merchants who control this Bartmann jug market were from Amsterdam.
We have the coat-of-arms of the Holy Roman Empire and this is dated.
We have an "-O4" at the top and we can assume that is 1604.
This is the Danish coat-of-arms.
So there is a wide selection of coats-of-arms represented here at Jamestown.
Each one of these little vessels was wheel-thrown
—handmade on the wheel, a time-consuming process—
and the faces and medallions were made
by pressing little wads of clay into molds that the potters carved
so they're very individual faces and medallions.
Before they were fired they were dipped into liquid iron oxide.
So the iron oxide appears as this reddish-brown to a very dark-brown color during the firing.
It can range in color depending on the temperature of the kiln.
Some of the medallions and faces were decorated with cobalt oxide as well,
which shows up as blue.
We're working on our minimum number count of the vessels.
We have well over a 100 represented to date
but I am certain many more will be recovered in the future.