ABSTRACT

In southern Britain, the start of the second millennium Bc, the end of the conventional Bronze Age, is marked by a series of large, bucket- and barrel-shaped pots with abundant applied cordon and fingernail- and fingertip-impressed decoration. Though the fabrics are frequently coarse with large, angular calcined flint opening agents, the vessels are generally well made and often highly, if simply, decorated. If these large urns are, rightly or wrongly, termed the coarse ware, then the fine wares take the form of smaller, globular closed vessels in a finer fabric with broad scored lines and chevron motifs around the base of the neck. These pots form part of the Deverel-Rimbury tradition or complex (Calkin 1962) now datable from c.1000 Bc (Barrett 1976) (Figure 19.1). Elsewhere in Britain, similar regional ceramic equivalents pertain; a tradition of relatively coarse, bucket- and barrel-shaped urns with limited decoration found on domestic sites as well as with cremation burials (Gibson 1986a: 52). These vessels are in marked contrast to the preceding richly decorated ceramic repertoire of Food Vessels, Collared Urns and Urns of the earlier Bronze Age from which the barrel and bucket urn series evolve.