A Forged Glamour by Melanie Giles

Author:Melanie Giles [Giles, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology, History, Europe, General
ISBN: 9781905119462
Google: tbd8AwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 15903129
Publisher: Windgather Press
Published: 2012-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.3. Examples of ceramic jars from square barrow burials. R186 and BF37. Based on Stead 1991, 115, fig. 77.

Ceramics and Food

The most common durable item was a ceramic jar: hand-made, simple earthernware vessels, some with marked shoulders and out-turned rims, others which were more shapeless, upright jars (Figure 5.3). Occasional beaded rims or internal chamfers are also found (perhaps to create a seat for a lid, like the preserved wooden disc complete with finger-hole, found at North Cave, Dent 2010, 39) and there is one example of an erratic tempered vessel with pedestal foot and zones of burnishing (found in grave R143, associated with an involuted brooch of c. 2nd century date). Most vessels were simply smoothed on the inside, though a ‘slurry’ of clay may have been used to create an even exterior, which was sometimes further smoothed or burnished (Rigby in Stead 1991, 104). Interestingly, a narrow range of temper ‘recipes’ was chosen for interment in the graves, consisting of either erratic (ETW) or calcite (CTW) tempered wares, with a third fabric containing both erratic inclusions and organic temper (1991). (In contrast, a further four fabric types are known from contemporary settlement sites north of the Humber which are not represented in these funerary assemblages, ibid., 95). Rigby considers that at least five different clay sources are indicated from differences in the background matrix (ibid.). The large inclusions of erratic-temper were probably added deliberately to the clay, and may originate from glacio-fluvial drifts (Freestone and Middleton in Stead 1991, 163): pebbles and boulders found on the Holderness Plain (especially along its exposed and eroding coastal cliffs), which were heated and quenched to produce large fragments. In contrast, the calcite appears to have been crushed, and probably derives from rare outcrops within the chalk, perhaps exposed during quarrying activities. A rare example of glauconite in one vessel might also derive from the glacial tills but could be from a Speeton Clay deposit outcropping north of Burton Fleming (ibid., 164). There is some indication of valley-based preferences, with ETW fabrics being quite common in the Great Wold Valley cemeteries of Rudston and Burton Fleming (alongside the dominant CTW), but less common from Wetwang and Garton Slack, where calcite tempered wares are the norm. Pots may therefore have been ‘readable’ in terms of the sources of their clay and temper, and the landscape with which they were associated.

The level of firing of these vessels was sometimes of such poor quality that the small jars had distorted and fragmented in the grave. The range of colour was also variable, suggesting that neither oxidation (producing red-orange colours) nor reduction or fuming (grey to sooty black) was an explicit intention of the potter. Rigby even suggested that these vessels might have been purpose-made for the funeral (ibid., 105 e.g. R46). However, many had sooted exteriors, suggesting they had been used at least once. In the Great Wold Valley, approximately one third of pots were represented by lower bodies and bases only (ibid.). Many

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