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  • ceramics

    • Artifact ID #: 0160
    • Excavation Unit: Locality 30
    • Level: Unknown
    • Identification: Chinese stoneware ginger base fragment, thick green glaze. This is a small corner fragment of a jar that would have held dried or preserved ginger, and imported directly from China. The Chinese would use ginger bowl as a main ingredient in a variety of recipes, but the root could also be used as a medicine to cure a wide variety of physical and mental ailments. Ginger was an expensive luxury on the mining frontier of the United States, and only stores and wealthy Chinese residents would have been able to purchase the full vessels. Unlike the other types of Chinese ceramics, ginger jars were popular among Euro-Americans due to their vibrant green glaze, decorative embossing, and hexagonal (or six-sided) shape. In German Gulch, this ginger jar was likely purchased for the ginger to use in cooking, but could have been kept for a long time afterwards to serve other storage uses.


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