Compositional Identification of Seville Majolica at Overseas Sites

This study reports compositional data for the first majolica ceramics excavated from a 16th-century kiln site in the Sevillian suburb of Triana. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) of 63 of the ceramics provides baseline data for documenting the growth and spread of Spanish majolica industries and networks of supply during the Spanish colonial period. In an initial comparison the kiln site data are shown to match majolica data from the North African Portuguese fort of Qsar es-Seghir (1458-1550) and the New World Spanish mission of Santa Catalina de Guale (1567-1680), confirming that Seville majolica was exported to both settlements. The Santa Catalina samples are from more than one source, however, and some are compositionally unrelated to any Spanish data. Two alternative hypotheses are offered to explain the difference in supply at the two colonies.