The following maps include areas where oyster jars have been found, presented in descending order of the number of jars recovered (ranging from over 35 to 1 found at each location).

Guyana is the area where most oyster jars, especially Commeraw type, have been recovered in the mud surrounding the islands in the Essequibo River as well as the riverbank and drainage ditches adjacent to the former sugar cane fields and merchant waterfront. After this, Suriname is the area where the second most jars have been recovered. Here there has been a higher diversity in jar types, probably owing to the fact that the city of Paramaribo had connections to both New York and, more importantly, New England (Boston, MA and Providence, RI). All of these jars have been found by bottle diggers working in the city at construction sites.

After the South American ports comes the tiny island of Bermuda which has been connected to British Naval operations and Colonial American trade for centuries. Here, numerous New York jars have been recovered, including jars made by Thomas Commeraw. All of these have been recovered by SCUBA divers searching the former anchorages of Naval and merchant vessels.

Following Bermuda, is Charleston, SC where a number of New York oyster jars have been recovered by bottle hunters digging in privies along the historic waterfront. Next is Connecticut and Rhode Island where a very small number, of mostly later style jars (the ones made in CT) have been recovered in the antique trade. Upstate New York follows NE with a couple jars recovered from different periods again the in the antique trade. Then comes Manhattan where two oyster jars were recovered in an archaeological context during a dig along the East River waterfront of lower Manhattan in a boarding house context. Finally, single jars have been found on Martha’s Vineyard (dug in someone’s yard) and St. Croix (from a historic anchorage).

There are surely many more oyster jars out there to be found, but the majority of these are likely on the bottom of the Atlantic or under several feet of sediment at a historic anchorage site near one of the islands of the West Indies…