Hunt the Saxons – Pottery
records
One of the strengths
of the micro-archaeological approach used by FSARG in this
project is 100% recovery of pottery – the sievers do not
miss the tiniest sherd. The following Excel workbook shows
the distribution of this pottery grouped by chronological
period for each of the Test Pits (TPs). The quantities shown
are in grams. All of these pits, except for TP27, were
excavated using 30cm spits, to a maximum depth of 1.2metres
(four spits at most). Where for various reasons (see TP
reports) a full spit was not excavated, an appropriate
weighting has been applied to the pottery amount found.
This means that the distributions in the pits can be
reliably compared, an analytical technique which has been
useful for interpretation.
The chronological
periods are defined as follows:
| Neolithic |
4000BC |
2200BC |
| Bronze Age |
2200BC |
800BC |
| Iron Age |
800BC |
100BC |
| Late Iron
Age |
100BC |
AD43 |
|
Romano-British |
AD43 |
AD410 |
| Anglo
Saxon |
AD410 |
AD950 |
| Saxo-Norman |
AD950 |
AD1200 |
| Medieval |
AD1200 |
AD1500 |
| Early
modern |
AD1500 |
AD1800
|
| Modern |
AD1800 |
AD2005 |
Much of the pottery
can be more closely dated than this – our mermaid logo, for
example, is taken from an Early English Delft bowl c1660
found in TP17. In many cases more detail is given in Test
Pit reports. At present (June 2007) we are in the process
of setting up a pottery reference collection: once this has
been professionally checked we will publish it online and
use it to describe the assemblages in more detail.
Suggestions wanted!
We do have something
of a dilemma. So far we have around 50 kg of pottery, most
of it small body sherds and nearly all of it excavated using
a spit approach. Cataloguing all of these thousands of
pieces seems unhelpful and laborious, yet a fair number of
them are interesting and significant – imported wares, for
example.
Orton’s ‘eves’
approach is not appropriate here because of the arbitrary
nature of the spit boundaries. We could be selective and
catalogue only medieval and earlier pottery for each TP, or,
alternatively, concentrate on a few TPs with particularly
representative assemblages e.g. TP1, TP14. I would welcome
advice on this. Whatever we decide, we will be archiving
all of the pottery for future users.
Pat Reid, June 2007
Click button for Pottery
Chronology Tables
|
