Art in the Archaeological Imagination by Dragos Gheorghiu

Author:Dragos Gheorghiu [Gheorghiu, Dragos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789253528
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2020-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

On the return journey Trevisker clay could be put in the bottom of the boat and the Trevisker ceramics set into the wet clay to stop them rolling and being damaged on the return journey. The ceramics were then distributed to the settlements that had provided the grain for the north Cornwall ceramic producers.

Figure 4.2: Tools used to make Trevisker Ware ceramic decorations: a) plait cord; b) twisted cord; c) comb; d) scored; e) finger print

I needed to attempt to make some Trevisker ware ceramics to see if they looked like the ones excavated with the large fire cracked gabbroic inclusions in them. I decided to make three copies of large Trevisker Ware funerary urns to test this hypothesis. I planned to read a paper on my findings at the EAA Lisbon conference in September 2000.

So I decided to make the urns with the coil method and then had to replicate the distinctive Trevisker style decorations on the urns. At a Bronze Age site in Cornwall called Trethellan, situated on the coast south of Trevisker, a wide variety of Trevisker type pot decoration can be found on the ceramics (Fig 4.2, a–e; Nowakowski 1991, 109–120).

Finding fire cracked gabbroic stones was not a problem as I had been using those stones for cooking at my research centre for years. I crushed some into very fine particles leaving some relatively large pieces to replicate the shards in the Trevisker pots in the archaeology. I then mixed the plastic Trevisker clay with approximately 40% of the mixed crushed gabbroic temper. This made it very gritty clay to coil but the plasticity of the Trevisker clay helped it hold together well enough for making such a large vessel. I made the pots in the spring thinking they could have all the summer to dry out naturally before firing. However, it was a very wet summer in Cornwall that year and I kept putting off the firing until they had dried out completely. The weather did not improve, so I just had to take a chance that the urns were not too damp to be fired in an open bonfire.

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