Image: Pot sherds (FindID 511999)

Description: Two pottery rim sherds and seven body sherds from a Bronze Age vessel that might have been used as an urn or a large storage vessel for food, as it would have originally been over 360 mm in diameter. The colour of the fabric is light brown to orange and varies over the interior and exterior surfaces of the sherds. The inclusions in the fabric include large fragments of pale felspars and grey augite, which suggest that the pot was made using gabbroic clay from the area where it was found, which weathers over the gabbro stone. There also appears to be some other material added to the clay to produce a gabbroic admixture, which suggests that the clay may have been moved and potted away from the gabbro area (Henrietta Quinnell pers comm). The surfaces of the sherds are also very pitted where some of these larger inclusions have weathered out of the fabric, possibly since the sherds were uncovered 50 years ago and then left outside. The everted rim is flat-topped and rectangular in profile. Below the rim on the exterior surface are four horizontal deeply incised grooves that are parallel to the rim, and then a band of oblique parallel plaited cord-impressed lines, bordered by another three horizontal grooves, between this band and another band of oblique plaited cord-impressed lines, which run in the other direction, at about a 45 degree angle, so that the whole pattern looks like multiple chevrons. This style of decoration is known locally as Trevisker ware after a site in St Eval where it was first found, and the pottery with this style is generally dated from the Middle Bronze Age, c.1500-1150 BC. Large urns with similar decoration have recently been found at the nearby site of Boden in Manaccan, during excavations in 2003 and 2008 (publication pending). One of these pots has been radio carbon dated from c.1400-1190 BC (James Gossip pers comm). Nowakowski (1991) illustrates a vessel with a similar rim, bands and chevrons from the Middle Bronze Age settlement at Trethellan on page 111, Fig.42, No.12, and another larger vessel with plaited cord-impressed chevrons below deep grooves on page 119, Fig.50, No.64.
Title: pot sherds
Credit: https://finds.org.uk/database/ajax/download/id/389139 Catalog: https://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/389139/recordtype/artefacts Artefact: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/511999
Author: Royal Institution of Cornwall, Anna Tyacke, 2012-07-11 22:27:21
Permission: Attribution-ShareAlike License version 4.0 (verified 5 December 2020)
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Attribution Required?: Yes