Concentrating on mundane items, rather than luxury goods, I develop new techniques to unlock the interpretive potential of these challenging artifacts. Standardized recording techniques tailored to specific projects and materials transforms generic artifacts to temporally and culturally relevant evidence of past lifeways. Elemental analysis offers a way to resolve basic questions (what, where, when) about these materials, grounding them with geographically specific markers. 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.
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Recent Publications:
Bloch, Lindsay C., Erin S. Nelson, Neill J. Wallis, and Ashley M. Rutkoski (2025): Creating Standardized Guides for Pottery Temper Characterization. Advances in Archaeological Practice: https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2025.8
Ardren, Traci, Lindsay Bloch, Brandi L. MacDonald, Alexandra Kuo, K. Valerio-Romero, K. Garcia, Scott Fitzpatrick, Victor Thompson, and Michelle J. LeFebvre (2025): Provenance of Pottery from the Florida Keys: A Geochemical Pilot Study. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1mAs3,rVDBnORO
Nelson, Erin, Ian Thompson, Carole Ayers, David Batton, Lindsay Bloch, Karen Downen, Vangie Robinson, Ashley Rutkoski, Andrea Torvinen, Neill Wallis (2025): Braiding Knowledge in Mobile Bay: Collaborative Research and Revitalization of Choctaw Ceramic Traditions. SAA Archaeological Record 25(3): 4-11. https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=847190&p=6&view=issueViewer
Bloch, Lindsay, Emily C. Kracht, John M. Jaeger, and William F. Keegan (2025): Palmetto Ware Pottery of the Lucayan Islands: Reverse Engineering a Novel Pottery Type. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology:1–28, https://doi.org/10.1080/15564894.2025.2528212.
Bloch, Lindsay, Charles R. Cobb, Nicolas Delsol, Gifford J. Waters, Edmond A. Boudreaux, Chester B. DePratter, Ashley A. Dumas, et al. (2025): Spanish Signatures? XRF Analysis of Iron Artifacts in the American Southeast. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-025-00796-4.
Emily C. Kracht and Lindsay Bloch (2024): Shake, Rattle, and Roll: Continuity of Rattling Ceramic Vessels and Adornos in the Caribbean. North American Archaeologist, 10.1177/01976931241260885
C. Trevor Duke, Neill J. Wallis, Lindsay Bloch, Ann S. Cordell, and Michael D. Glascock (2023): Sourcing Ritual Specialists in Ancient Tampa Bay (AD 650-1550): A Multi-Sited Chemical and Petrographic Approach, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101528.
William F. Keegan, David W. Steadman, Michelle LeFebvre, Neill Wallis, Lindsay Bloch, Nancy Albury, Janet Franklin & Emily Kracht (2023): Island Colonization and Human-Environment Interactions on the Edges of the Tropics: Archaeology of the Taíno Frontier (Northern Bahamas), Journal of Field Archaeology, 10.1080/00934690.2023.2179188
Kracht, Emily, Lindsay Bloch, William F. Keegan. 2022. Production of Greater Antillean Pottery and Its Exchange to the Lucayan Islands: A Compositional Study. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103469
Hanna, Jonathan, William Keegan, Michael Pateman, and Lindsay Bloch. Human-Environment Interactions in a Bahamian Dune Landscape: A Geoarchaeological Study of a New Lucayan Burial Site. Geoarchaeology DOI: 10.1002/gea.21866.
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. DOI: 10.1017/aap.2020.53
Bloch, Lindsay and Elizabeth Bollwerk. 2020 Coarse Earthenware in Dominica. In Slavery on the Edge of Empire: The Political Ecology of a Caribbean Plantation, 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, pp. 303-320. Sidestone Press, Leiden.
Cordell, Ann and Lindsay Bloch. 2019 A Guide to Pottery Reconstruction. Miscellaneous Project Report 69. Unpublished manual on file, Florida Museum of Natural History.
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. DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.01.012
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. DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12330
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 byBarbara 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. DOI: 10.7183/0002-7316.81.2.231
Bloch, Lindsay. 2015 Use of Handheld XRF Bruker Tracer III-SD. Manual prepared for the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.