Collections Manager, Florida Archaeology and Ceramic Technology Laboratory
Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida
Tel: (352) 273-1924, Fax: (352) 392-3698
E-mail: lbloch@floridamuseum.ufl.edu
Twitter: @CeramicTechLab and @Lindsay_Bloch
I am a collections manager for the Ceramic Technology Laboratory and Florida Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida. As an archaeologist, I use artifacts, architecture, and documentary records to investigate human life in the past. Concentrating on mundane items, rather than luxury goods, I develop new techniques to unlock the interpretive potential of these challenging artifacts. My research focuses on craft production, trade, and exchange, examined through the lens of utilitarian ceramics. I have conducted analyses on collections from the southeastern U.S., Great Britain, and the Caribbean using a variety of methods including LA-ICP-MS and XRF to discover new information about these often visually generic artifacts. Elemental analysis offers a way to resolve basic questions about these materials, which then transforms them from generic artifacts to temporally and geographically specific markers of trade and exchange. In addressing people- and narrative-oriented questions through methodologies based in chemistry, geology, and statistics, my work emphasizes the scientific basis of social science research.
Education
2015 Ph.D. Department of Anthropology, UNC-CH
Dissertation Title: Made in America? Ceramics, Credit, and Exchange on Chesapeake Plantations PDF
2011 M.A. Department of Anthropology, UNC-CH
Thesis Title: An Archaeological Study of Common Coarse Earthenware in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake PDF
2004 B.A. cum laude, Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary
Publications
Bloch, Lindsay, Jacob Hosen, Emily Kracht, Michelle LeFebvre, Claudette Lopez, Rachel Woodcock, and William F. Keegan
2021 Is It Better to Be Objectively Wrong or Subjectively Right? Testing the Accuracy and Consistency of the Munsell Capsure Spectrocolorimeter for Archaeological Applications. Advances in Archaeological Practice.https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2020.53
Bloch, Lindsay and Elizabeth Bollwerk
2020 Sourcing Coarse Earthenware at Morne Patate: The Impacts of French Colonialism and Local Exchange. In Archaeology in Dominica: Everyday Ecologies and Economies at Morne Patate, edited by Mark Hauser and Diane Wallman, pp.129-152. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.
Bloch, Lindsay
2019 Sourcing Domestic and Industrial Ceramics from Trents Plantation Barbados using LA-ICP-MS (Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry). In Pre-Colonial and Post-Contact Archaeology in Barbados, edited by Maaike S. de Waal, Niall Finneran, Matthew C. Reilly, Douglas V. Armstrong & Kevin Farmer. Sidestone Press, Leiden.
Bloch, Lindsay, Neill J. Wallis, George Kamenov, and John Jaeger
2019 Production Origins and Matrix Constituents of Spiculate Pottery in Florida, USA: Defining Ubiquitous St. Johns Ware by LA-ICP-MS and XRD. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24:313-323. PDF
Millhauser, John K., Lindsay Bloch, Mark Golitko, Lane F. Fargher, Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecuhtli, Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, Richard E. Blanton, and Michael D. Glascock.
2018 Chemical Variability in the Paredón Obsidian Source, Puebla and Hidalgo, Mexico. Archaeometry 60(3):453-470.
Bloch, Lindsay and Anna S. Agbe-Davies
2017 “And other Sorts of small Ware too tedious to mention:” Petty Consumerism on US Plantations. In Material Worlds: Archaeology, Consumption, and the Road to Modernity, edited by Barbara J. Heath, Eleanor E. Breen and Lori A. Lee. Routledge, New York.
Bloch, Lindsay
2016 An Elemental Approach to the Distribution of Lead-Glazed Coarse Earthenware in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake. American Antiquity 81(2):231-252.PDF
MANUALS AND TECHNICAL REPORTS
Cordell, Ann and Lindsay Bloch
2019 A Guide to Pottery Reconstruction. Miscellaneous Project Report 69. Unpublished manual on file, Florida Museum of Natural History. PDF
Bloch, Lindsay
2017 LA-ICP-MS Analysis of Coarse Earthenwares from Plantations of Jamaica and Barbados. Unpublished report on file, Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.
2016 LA-ICP-MS Analysis of Coarse Earthenwares from Morne Patate, Dominica. Unpublished report on file, Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.
2016 XRF Analysis of Monticello Study Collection. Unpublished report on file, Monticello Department of Archaeology.
2016 Reanalysis of Coarse Earthenwares from Williamsburg-area DAACS Sites. Unpublished report on file, Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.
2015 Use of Handheld XRF Bruker Tracer III-SD. Manual prepared for the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. PDF
OTHER WRITING
Bloch, Lindsay
2021 Testing Color Technology from the Bahamas to the Pandemic Bubble. Cambridge Core blog, June 2021.
2020 Clay Chronicles: Adventures in Experimental Archaeology. Ceramic Technology Lab blog, spring 2020.
2018 The Invisible Marks of Thomas Chandler. Exhibit catalog, Swag and Tassel: The Innovative Stoneware of Thomas Chandler. McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia.
2018 Natural History Museums Once Fermented Reptiles in Household Pickling Crocks. Atlas Obscura.
Bloch, Lindsay and Amy Alleman
2019 Rose Red Filmed by Any Other Name: A Genealogy of Pottery Typology in the Southeastern United States. SAA Archaeological Record 19(4):27-31. PDF
Bloch, Lindsay and Brenda Hornsby-Heindl
2018 Ceramics Identification is Clear as Mud. Society for Historical Archaeology blog, February 15, 2018.