# Ceramics and Africans in the United States of America and the Caribbean region  
Locally produced handmade ceramics are a common feature of historic sites across the Americas and are normally referred to as 'colonoware' in the United States, 'Afro-Caribbean ceramics' in the Caribbean region and the 'neo-Brazilian tradition' in Brazil. Despite great regional diversity, such ceramics share technological characteristics including a predominance of cord-marked and moulded manufacturing techniques, an absence of surface application of enamel or glaze and firing at low temperatures. As vessels with such characteristics are common in sites linked to the African diaspora, debate has been generated on the question of African cultural heritage in their manufacture and use, and on the theoretical models appropriated in order to define the cultural dynamic of which the pieces are a product.  
Such ceramics were first studied in the United States, in colonial sites in Virginia, in the early 1960s by Ivor Noël Hume, who classified them as 'colono-Indian ware'. According to Hume, their presence in plantations was due to a strand of Indigenous production designed for consumption by enslaved Afro-Americans. The question of the African influence was raised in the 1970s, owing to the similarity the pieces shared with the modern ceramics of Ghana and Nigeria in terms of manufacturing techniques, morphology and surface treatment (Ferguson, 1980). Considering such similarities, Ferguson proposed the term 'colonoware' as a means of emphasizing the impact of the colonial experience on the material, rather than on specific groups. Deetz (1977), in turn, identified a strong correlation between the chronological distribution of these ceramics and the African demographic pattern in Virginia and South Carolina at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with a peak in popularity between 1750 and 1800 and a significant decline at the turn of the nineteenth century. Such correlation supported the theory of African production.