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Some Anglo-Saxon Potters

Part of: Anglo-Saxon archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

J. N. L. Myres
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Extract

The study of Anglo-Saxon pottery in the pagan period in England has probably received less attention, and has certainly made less progress, than that of any other archaeological epoch. Our knowledge of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age ceramics has been revolutionized in the last ten or fifteen years, and it is now possible to use the pottery of these periods, as it should be possible to use the pottery of any period, as the most ignificant and sensitive element in the cultural evidence for the time. With some types of Roman pottery it is possible to go still further, and to treat them not only as a barometer to indicate the varying cultural pressures, so to speak, of different areas and sites, but even as a chronometer for the close dating of the different phases in their occupation. But with Anglo-Saxon pottery at present we can do none of these things. Apart from certain rare and peculiar forms recently studied by Roeder: we know about as much and about as little about it as was known when Neville published his Saxon Obsequies in 1852, or Kemble first drew attention to the continental parallels in a pioneer paper in Archaeologia in 1856.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 11 , Issue 44 , December 1937 , pp. 389 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1937

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References

1 See Röm.-germ. Kommission, 1928, XVIII, p. 149 Google Scholar, for his article on ‘window urns’ : and Mannus Ergänzungsband, 1928, VI, p. 190 Google Scholar, for his study of ‘spout-handled urns’.

2 See Akerman, J.Y., Second Report of Researches . . . at Brighthampton, Oxon, 1859, p. 3 Google Scholar, graves 24 and 27, and the cut on p. 14. The bodies in this case were those of a man and woman, perhaps husband and wife. Akerman’s account is reprinted from Archaeologia, XXXVIII.

3 In the Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St. Edmunds, there is another vase apparently by this potter. It came from a local collection and its findspot is unrecorded. Since however two of the three stamps on it appear to be identical with those on the three vessels on FIG. 3, and its general scheme of decoration is closely similar to theirs, there need be little doubt that it came from Lackford or West Stow, which are both in the immediate neighbourhood of Bury St. Edmunds.

4 See Sheppard, T., Hull Museum Publications, 1909, 66 and 67, p. 53–4Google Scholar, 4 (reprinted from Archaeologia, 1880, XLV, pl. XXXIII) and IV, 9.

5 It is highly probable that the pot illustrated by Hollingworth and O’Reilly, Anglo-Saxon Cemtery at Girton, 1925 Google Scholar, pl. VII, I, also belongs to this group. It has the same horizontal zone of linear chevrons and one of its two stamps appears to be identical with the first illustrated on this page, but the more numerous shoulder bosses have driven out the pendant triangles and altered the lower part of the design.

6 The Oxford example is published by Rolleston (Archaeologia, 1880, XLV, pl. XXXIII, I). One of the Hull examples is illustrated by Sheppard, T., Hull Museum Publications, 1909 Google Scholar, 66 and 67, Pl. VIII, 18. The other, which is much smaller, has not been published ; it has been wrongly restored from the neck upwards which serves to mask its likeness to the other two.

7 See, for example, Plettke, A., Unprzlng und Ausbreitung der Angeln und Sacken, 1920.Google Scholar