Majolica ceramics Mexican production

This chapter is an attempt to refine the classification of Mexican majolica ceramics from Spanish Colonial sites by using chemical data obtained by neutron activation analysis. The ceramics examined came primarily from excavations in Mexico City and from the Santa Catalina de Guale Mission site, St. Catherines Island, GA. The majolica types from these sites are both Spanish and Mexican and date from the 16th to the late 17th century. A rationale for the chemical classification of Mexico City and Puebla production is proposed. 

The ceramic samples selected for discussion in this chapter are those of Mexican production. As reported by Maggetti et al. (5), the Mexican majolica production includes both calcareous and noncalcareous paste compositions. This chapter will focus on the calcareous Mexican majolica. The following ware types were selected to examine questions of the assignation... 

Neutron activation and petrographic analysis of late medieval Spanish pottery from the major Spanish production centers of Seville, Granada, Patema-Manises, Barcelona, and Talavera-Puente allowed progress to be made in uniquely characterizing these production centers (5-7). Efforts to identify different Mexican majolica productions petrographically have been unsuccessful, and an attempt at chemical characterization by directly coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy was later determined to have been flawed by problems encountered with the dissolution of the ceramic samples... 

The chemical composition of imported, European-made majolica is different from that of majolica made in Mexico (J). The difiFerences in the concentrations of the oxides of cerium, lanthanum, and thorium are eaily recognized the Spanish majolica contains approximately twice as much of each of these oxides as the Mexican majolica. The mineralogical composition, too, of the pottery products of each area is fundamentally different and can easily be identified. The ceramic types and their origins, based on archaeological arguments, can be found in Table I. 

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