Tag Archives: pottery

Find of the month March – a selection of finds chosen by our work experience student, Matt.

By Matt and Yvonne Rose (Archive Project Supervisor)

For February, just for a change, there’s a slight twist to “Find of the Month”. For the past three Thursdays the finds and archiving team has been joined by work experience student Matt. He’s been busy washing the usual assortment of pottery, tile and animal bone, so to make the days more interesting we’ve shown him an array of the more exciting finds from past excavations. We asked him to choose two of his favourite finds, along with a few other questions, so that we could find out a bit more about Matt and his interests. Here are the results:

How long have you been interested in archaeology?

Since I was around 7 years of age (10 years ago).

How did you become interested in archaeology?

I became interested in history by watching Time Team on the TV in my own time. It encouraged me to go outside and try it for myself. Ever since I started finding actual finds of importance I enjoyed it more and more, up to this day. Now I wish to continue further with a regular job in either archaeology or palaeontology.

What is your favourite period in history?

Probably Roman.

Which finds have you liked the most, and why?

The Roman face pot (nicknamed Marion) because it is a very nice pot from my favourite period in history. I would also like to do some research on it at some point in the future.

I like the Palaeolithic flint blade due to the fact that it is very old (around 10 000 years). I also like to think about the many different ways it could have been used. I love the history behind it.

Palaeolithic flint blade

The Roman face pot (Marion)

What would you like to find in the future?

A hoard of Roman coins or something gold!

We wish Matt well in his remaining weeks with us and hope he finds that gold one day!

“Marion”: The Bourne Head Pot

By Feenagh Johnson, Project Supervisor

At the end of last year, Allen Archaeology (Marine division) undertook a small excavation in the Market Town of Bourne, Lincolnshire.

The site at Bourne

Now I maybe biased, having grown up a mere stone’s throw away, but I already thought the site was pretty exciting… and then this little lady turned up in the first excavated feature. She was covered in mud and in many fragments but enough of her features were visible to identify a face, and it was the unusual form of her hair that gave her the nickname “Marion” (as the frills looked like a medieval headdress).

Finding Marion

A muddy Marion

Although similar to their better known cousins, the face pot, head pots are usually made of a fine fabric with the body of the vessel moulded into the form of human head. Their exact nature is uncertain but it has been postulated that they are ritual vessels, with another notable Lincolnshire example, the “DON MERCVRIO” head pot, being dedicated to the cult of Mercury.

The fully cleaned headpot

However, the Bourne Head pot is unique; she is beautifully hand painted with a distinct hair style and facial features. It’s very possible that the vessel was “made to order” sometime in the 4th century AD, and it would be nice to think that she was modelled after an actual person before being ritually deposited… unfortunately we can only hypothesize!

illustration by C Bentley

Find of the month: June – Why mend a mortaria ?

Director, Mark Allen discusses why anyone would pay good money to fix a broken pot

Our find of the month for June is rather intriguing. It is a Roman mortaria, the ancestor to the modern day pestle and mortar we use today for crushing seeds and spices, and was found during monitoring of groundworks for a housing development in Suffolk.

Mortaria are not particularly rare objects, and they often turn up on Roman sites. However, what is rather special about this example that it was made in the 1st century or early 2nd century AD and has clearly been dropped and broken into a number of pieces, before being repaired. The repairs consist of twin sets of holes drilled through the sherds with lengths of lead used to ‘staple’ the pieces together: no UHU (other brands of glue are available) or sticky tape existing at the time!

Roman mortaria, used for grinding food, which has been broken and mended using lead staples

This may in itself sound pretty unimpressive, but the mystery is that with the repairs the mortaria would have become far less useful and could not have been used for crushing or mixing liquids anymore. ‘How is this interesting ?’ I hear you cry! Well, it gives us an insight into the social activities and values of the Roman who owned this nearly 2,000 years ago, a rare opportunity without inventing a time machine and popping back to observe the people themselves.

If we examine the vessel more closely we see other clues: the spout (to right of the photo) is quite worn suggesting it had seen a lot of use. This is further confirmed when we look at the inside of the bowl. Mortaria were made by pressing small, hard grits into the soft clay before firing, producing a rough, jagged surface to help crush the food inside the bowl. Modern mortaria do not do this because the grits would occasionally pop out and end up in the food, which is not very good for your teeth! In this instance, the grits have been all but lost or worn down, again showing that the mortaria had been used for a long time.

The time, effort and expense required to repair the mortaria would have been considerable considering it was now next to useless as a household item and it’s much more common to see repairs on fancy vessels like Samian ware (Willis 2005, 11.4), so why on earth would you repair such a thing? The most plausible explanation is that it held some intrinsic value to the individual who had it repaired. The object itself was important, less so its functionality. We can never be sure, but perhaps it was a present or had been inherited from a deceased relative or friend, and just the presence of the vessel was a reminder of them.

Archaeology is not just about preparing a record of the physical remains of former activities, it is also the study of past behaviour. Through the physical objects we gain insights into past lives. At a time that A Level archaeology has been scrapped and fewer universities are offering degree courses in the subject than once did, we should remember that the study of the past is important, in that it gives us the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. Perhaps now, more than ever, this needs to be highlighted.

References:

Willis, S, 2005, Samian Pottery, a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and Beyond: the results of the English Heritage funded Samian Project. An e-monograph. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/1/11.4_5.html

Find of the month: April

This month’s find is a sherd of Anglo-Saxon pottery from an evaluation in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. It was found in a small posthole alongside a narrow gully terminal, which may have been associated with a structure.

The fabric of the pottery sherd is known as Stamford Ware owing, unsurprisingly, to its manufacture in a number of small potteries concentrated around the Lincolnshire town of Stamford. It was produced between the ninth and thirteenth centuries; by the tenth century, Stamford was one of the major pottery centres of England, exporting its wares throughout the country. By this time, pottery would have been produced on a wheel as opposed to the earlier method of building up a vessel in a series of rings or coils. Stamford produced a variety of fine wheel-thrown vessels, mainly cooking pots, small bowls, spouted pitchers, jugs and dishes. Many of the fine table wares were decorated with a transparent lead glaze and, after circa 1150, with a bright copper green glaze, a useful piece of dating evidence for the archaeologist.

The pottery sherd from Wellingborough is unglazed and an unusually dark colour. This colour is the result of a lack of oxygen during the firing process, a process known as reduction, and is associated with the earlier fabric types. The sherd is decorated with a band of diamond-notched rouletting typical of the 10^th-century examples. At just 25mm in length, it is unfortunately too small to determine the form of the original vessel.

Stamford pot

So why choose a sherd of pottery barely bigger than a postage stamp as Find of the Month? Well, evidence of Anglo-Saxon activity in this area of Wellingborough is scarce, with reported finds being restricted to a single small find of a silver penny of Edward the Confessor (Pastscape Monument 345426). So, despite its diminutive size, this piece of pottery is actually a find of significant local importance.

References:

Kilmurry, K, 1980 The Pottery Industry of Stamford, Lincs. C. AD850-1250 British Archaeology Report British Ser 84

Blinkhorn, P, 2017 Pottery and CBM from 30 High Street, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire (Site WEHS17) In AAL Report AAL2017019

Regia Anglorum – Anglo-Saxon and Viking Crafts – Pottery

University of Leicester website

Archaeology is rubbish*

Natasha Powers, Senior Manager

We recently finished work on a site to the south of Lincoln. There were no Roman buildings or prehistoric flint scatters but a group (or assemblage) of objects was collected and brought back to the offices. Collections of material like this look familiar to us and they can show the processes we go through to interpret a site no matter its age, and the difficulties we face in doing so.

What was it for? A bottle is probably used for storing liquids, we know that because we have seen objects a similar shape and that’s what they were being used for (their function). Shape (or form) is one of the key ways in which we interpret objects. We have a helping hand here as many of the objects still have writing on them, so we can find out exactly what they were used for. We can use the characteristics of those objects to help us work out what the ones without labels might be. The base of no. 12 tells us that it was made to store Hartley’s jams or preserves. We can therefore work out that no. 11, which is not marked but looks very similar, was used for the same function but presumably by different a company. We work out what the objects are by comparing them with other, sometimes more complete, objects which have the same shape or characteristics.

Modern ‘rubbish’ but what can it tell us?

How old is it? Creating a typology (the classification of objects according to their characteristics) can also be key to establishing their date. Shapes and styles may change over time and if you have an object that you can give a secure date to, you can build up a pattern. Here, we can look at the ketchup bottle (no. 5) and see that it looks like those that were produced between 1914 and 1930. Research can help us work out how old other objects may be: Wiltshaw & Robinson (makers of Carlton Ware) produced over 1000 different shapes of Heraldic Souvenir China 1903–1926, including our yacht (no. 13). Bray & Co. Bus Company, changed their name to Lincolnshire Road Car in May 1930, so the ticket stub (no. 26) must be earlier than this. In fact the objects all seem to have been made before 1930, but not earlier than the start of the 20th century.

Typology of ketchup

When was it deposited? Production date doesn’t tell us when these objects were buried. Some objects stay in circulation longer than others because they have uses beyond their original purpose, because we find them aesthetically pleasing or because they become heirlooms. Stoneware jam pots were superseded by glass jam jars, but we have both here. Empty stoneware jars make excellent pencil pots or vases, so perhaps they were reused before being thrown away (I keep match boxes in one at home)?

What does it mean? Take away our knowledge of these objects from their history and how would we interpret them as a group? Why would someone have a small model house and a boat? Is there a religious significance to these items? Why do they have a coat of arms on them? Did the person who they belonged to own land in, or have family in Southport and Bedford? Perhaps they were just pretty objects picked up at a jumble sale? There is a glass pot marked ‘Spear’s Games’ – does that mean there are children involved in the creation of this rubbish? There is a pocket watch of a type that you would expect to belong to a man, but we need to be careful when we ‘engender’ objects: I own a watch much like that myself. Likewise, there is a pot of solid perfume that we might assume is a ‘female’ object. Did they smoke or need a stick to walk with? There are a lot of ink bottles, one of which even has a pen-nib still in it – is this rubbish from a school or an office? Is it from the home of a writer? All in all, there are storage containers, decorative items and practical ones (like the syrup of figs from a brand known as “the family laxative”!). Perhaps, sometime after 1930 someone had a clear-out and got rid of Aunt Agatha’s now unfashionable nick-nacks?

The truth is that we can’t ever know for certain. We can say that the objects were thrown away because they were no longer considered useful. The key to making our interpretation the best that it can be is to gather as much information together as is possible, compare our site with others and set the discovery in context…and that applies to a Roman farmstead as much as a 20th century rubbish dump.

(*with apologies to Tony Robinson and Mick Aston for borrowing the title of their book)

No.	Description
1	Glass storage jar
2	Robertson’s Scotch Marmalade jar with partial label and motif
3	Medicine or household chemical bottle, very incomplete label reads ‘methylated’. Moulded with horizontal divisions showing tablespoons
4	Glass bottle
5	Heinz ketchup bottle with partial label
6	?Champagne bottle
7	Moulded ‘Daddie’s’ sauce bottle
8	Lyons ?ink bottle with partial label
9	Glass bottle
10	Moulded California Fig Syrup Co. bottle
11	Stoneware preserves jar. No markings
12	Stoneware preserves jar. Base embossed ‘NOT genuine unless bearing Wm PH Hartley’s label’
13	Carlton Ware crested or heraldic china yacht (the Saucy Sue). Marked “Southport”
14	Bovril jar
15	Swan ink pot
16	Miniature vase
17	Lid with running dogs motif
18	Small jar
19	Willow Art crested china model of Paul Bunyan’s House with ‘The arms of ancient Bedford’
20	Bell’ Lyon’s ink tipper bottle with partial label and pen nib inside
21	Stoneware inkwell
22	Glass inkwell
23	Glass pot embossed ‘Spear’s Games’. Possibly a tiddlywinks container?
24	Clay pipe
25	Man’s pocket watched in tooled steel
26	Bray & Co. Bus Company
27	Skull of a small dog
28	Brass solid perfume pot with hinge and mirror in the lid. Perfume still present
29	?Bone/antler and brass walking stick handle in the shape of a duck’s head
30	Pocket watch winder (assoc. with 25)

Find of the month: December

December’s Find of the month has been written by Alice and was selected from some finds which have just returned from the pottery specialist (Ian Rowlandson).

Newport is a suburb of Lincoln known for a 3rd century gateway to the colonia but lesser known is a 2nd century pottery production site our team excavated in 2013 and 2015. Whilst the kilns were not within the excavation area we found large quantities of pottery and Fragments of kiln furniture. This specific production site was unknown before the excavation so it is quite a significant find.

I’ve decided to focus on a specific type of pottery produced at Newport known as mortaria. It was initially imported from the continent and copied in Britain from around the time of the Roman conquest. It’s a type of cookware that had multiple functions, they acted as a large mixing bowl and a mortar and pestle, sometimes they were used so frequently the abrasive grits were worn away and a hole appeared in the base of the pot.

Potters stamps on ceramics from Newport

It is a complicated task to identify the source of this pottery but it can be made slightly easier when the potter stamped his name into the rim. The picture below shows four examples from this site all produced in Lincolnshire

1. IILIVS – this is possibly a product of Dragonby, North Lincolnshire. Products from these kilns are quite unusual as the clay fires orange/red instead of the usual cream.
2. ATO or OTA retrograde (backwards) – there is a possibility this was made at our site as other examples of this stamp have been found in Newport. They are dated 140-165AD
3. CRICO – A more widespread potter whose wares have been found in Brough-upon-Humber and across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. They are also dated 140-165AD
4. SENICO – This potter was based at the kilns in Newport but also produced wares in South Carlton. Some examples have a worn die which leaves slightly blurred impressions and some have the C and O missing possibly because the stamp was trimmed after it wore down too far.

It must have taken a huge amount of skill to produce these pots and stamps. They show that the potters were capable of carving in reverse and relief. I have attempted to do this using modelling clay and had to write my name in marker on paper and turn it over to ensure the letters were correct when the stamp was used. Maybe future development within Newport will allow us to find the kiln structures and we can always hope that a whole stamped mortaria will be preserved within.

Hearlty K, 2016, Roman pottery in appendix 1.In Archaeological scheme of works: Land off Newport, Lincoln. (Report Number AAL 2015098). P23-56

Pottery training

Learning to recognise fabrics and forms

I’ve always had a ‘thing’ for pottery, stemming from my first experience of archaeological fieldwalking and finding a pile of greyware (I won’t mention the arrowhead I also found that day). Through volunteering on excavations and at the local museum I discovered there was an awful lot more to pottery than I expected. This year I have been undertaking some intensive training learning how to accurately identify, date, record and quantify pottery.

This process has involved numerous hours using a microscope and identifying minerals within the pottery fabric and comparing them to known local, national and even international fabrics. Each kiln has its own recipe of ingredients that gets mixed into the clay so if the kiln has been excavated a specific production site can be listed. The style/form of the pottery also gives indications of date. By cross referencing this information with previously identified examples a date range and hopefully a production site is revealed. As I don’t have the experience of the fabrics I have to check every sherd against a written description or an example piece and research every form with named examples from other sites. My progress is slow and occasionally frustrating but there are multiple ways to aid this process aside from 10 years of experience.

Archaeological text books can be challenging, they have huge amounts of text with pages of finds illustrated in the back. They are very difficult to read unless you are looking for something specific. To make the information more accessible I find writing the details and similar examples from other sites next to the illustration saves a lot of time flipping back and forth looking for dates and form names. I also have pages and pages of notes with sketches of rim types as a cheat sheet. Eventually I’ll be able to do this without having to look in a book every time.

It isn’t an easy thing to learn all this information and apply it with confidence to an assemblage but it has been enjoyable. The next step is going to be creating my own reference collection and building on my notes to help ease the process of remembering hundreds of fabrics and forms.

Find of the month: September

October’s find of the month was found just this week; during works around the forthcoming Chadwick Centre, at the International Bomber Command Memorial Site. Several large pieces of waster pots were found in a pit near to where three kilns had already been excavated back in 2014. Hopefully we could find another one!

Find of the month: large pieces of waster pots

We started work at the site in 2014. During an excavation in 2014, the three kilns were uncovered and have all been dated to the Romano-British period: probably towards mid to late 3rd Century. They are all fairly small, indicating that they were more likely to have been small subsistence kiln’s filling the needs of the local area, rather than a business. Earlier work has shown that the area has generally been in agricultural use; with multiple corn dryers, which would link into the local use of the kilns in a rural area.

One of the kilns excavated this week

A pottery kiln normally consists of a dome shaped superstructure which keeps the heat in, and around, the pottery being fired. A long triangular or oval shaped stokehole pit lies in front of the circular oven , which was where the fire was originally started and also where the ashes would be pulled out of the kiln into. Stokeholes are often very distinguishable due to their black, charcoaly appearance.

Base of a pot which didn’t make the grade because of the small depression that weakens the pot

Throughout the kiln structure you can find wasters. Wasters are piece of pottery that have not made the grade for whatever reason; be it a deformity such as a crack, a poor firing reducing the integrity of the structure, or an air bubble within the clay. You are less likely to find a complete rim of a vessel, which is why the one seen here is particularly exciting You can see on the picture of the little base, a small depression which would have been an air bubble that was trapped in the clay but burst during the firing. This not only creates a poor finish but it weakens the pottery.

One kiln found during the excavation had very little pottery wasters near, or in it, which suggests that it might have been used for something other than pottery. It could have been a bread oven, or as the more imaginative of us like to think; a pizza oven!

Digital Techniques: Structure from Motion (SfM) Photogrammetry

Warning: Images of human remains feature in this post

If you’re involved in the heritage sector then chances are you’ve seen a three dimensional (3D) model of an archaeological site, feature or artefact that you can view and interact with on a computer screen or mobile device. It’s likely this was created using SfM, which operates under the basic principle that 3D structure can be resolved using overlapping images. Photogrammetry is the science of making measurements from photographs. Therefore, SfM photogrammetry is the use of photographs to accurately record 3D models from which measurements and details can be recorded. I could go into more detail regarding the technique itself works but for now lets just assume it’s tantamount to magic!

Capturing a collard urn

We’ve been exploring the possible uses here at AAL for a couple of years now after initially learning about its potential from the master of archaeological photography, Adam Stanford (http://www.aerial-cam.co.uk/). Initially we trialled the technique out in the field for the recording of skeletons and masonry because these are two often poorly recorded feature-types; that and our office at the time was somewhat unsuitable for artefact recording (to put it mildly) and my spare bedroom/dark room at home was full of kittens. What we found was that, if recorded properly on site, the technique allowed for a more accurate record of the feature from which a traditional illustration could be made and disseminated to specialists to aid in their assessment/analysis.

Example of a record using SfM on site

It also allowed us to revisit these features from the comfort of the office (the new one, not the old one) and examine them in closer detail than we had time for on site.

Masonry recording

By the time my fieldwork marathon was complete we had a new head office in Lincoln with plenty of space for us to experiment with SfM on artefacts. Trial and error was key here, and there were many failed attempts before finally working out a methodology fit for the task (credit must go to Hugh Fiske for providing the inspiration needed to complete this and I’m sure you’ll agree he’s made some beautiful models, http://www.archaeo3d.me.uk/)

Part of the company ethos here focusses on training for all, and as soon as we were happy with the workflow we began training others in this recoding technique. Currently we’re building up a portfolio of models so that in the near-future we can showcase them online for everyone to access, so watch this space.

Chris training Andrea and Charlotte in Structure from Motion