INTRODUCTION: SOME BASICS THAT DETERMINE THE PRESENT POSITION

The single volume that is Ivor Noël Hume's Guide to the Artifacts of Colonial America, first published in 19701 and still in print without major alteration after almost forty years, is probably, for most students and practitioners, the best starting point for gaining a rounded view of the scope of regularly unearthed material culture from the 17th and early 18th centuries. The title can be slightly misleading in that several items included in the volume were found in London rather than America. This is the only introduction to post-medieval finds across the board within one book. Other attempts to cover a similar range of material are few. Kathleen Deagan's publications of finds in America of Spanish origin, withtwo volumes available, comes closest, but there is – remarkably, in view of the amount of work undertaken in Europe – still no equivalent work undertaken on the Old World side of the Atlantic.

The 16th century was, until very recently, surprisingly poorly served in terms of detailed assimilation of everyday material culture for a period so familiar in historical terms withits memorable events and personalities. A series of publications in the early 2000s has made this problem less acute. The published finds from the wreck of the Mary Rose (which sank in 1545) include a number of ‘voucher’ objects (first-time published with close dating), some of them apparently otherwise unknown until the early 1600s (the non-survival of iron from the wreck is a limiting factor on what is otherwise an outstanding marker for 16th-century material).