Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T02:44:18.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bronze Age Cremation Cemeteries in the East Midlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Carol S. M. Allen ,
Mary Harman  and
Hazel Wheeler
Carol S. M. Allen
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Nottingham
Mary Harman
Affiliation:
42 West High Street, Lauder
Hazel Wheeler
Affiliation:
Formerly Trent Valley Archaeological Research Committee, University Park, Nottingham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Two Bronze Age cremation cemeteries excavated between 1968 and 1975 are reported and discussed. At Coneygre Farm, Notts., fifty-one cremations were excavated, thirty-one in pots, six in cists, and fourteen uncontained. Cremations were deposited in a roughly linear arrangement and no barrow was found. At Pasture Lodge Farm, Lincs., twenty-seven pots were found, of which twenty-five had associated cremations, and fifteen further sherds could represent burials. Vessels in this cemetery form a small cluster. Pottery from these two cemeteries is broadly similar to Deverel-Rimbury ware and with vessels from other sites in the region is considered to form an East Midlands group of Bronze Age pottery. Vessels of this type from Frieston and Grantham, Lincs., are illustrated for the first time. Examination of thin sections of the pottery from the two cemeteries suggests that most, although not all, of the materials used could have been found locally. Organic remains found in thin sections provide environmental information. The effect of soils on durability of pots and their probable function is discussed. A direct relationship is noticed for the first time between the age of the cremated individual and the capacity of the pot in which the cremation was deposited.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 187 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barrett, J., 1976. ‘Deverel-Rimbury: Problems of Chronology and Interpretation’, in Burgess, C. and Miket, R. (eds), Settlement and Economy in the Third and Second Millennia B.C., 289. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 33.Google Scholar
Burgess, C., 1974. ‘The Bronze Age’, in Renfrew, C. (ed.), British Prehistory, A New Outline, 314 and note 33. London, Duckworth.Google Scholar
Burgess, C., 1980. The Age of Stonehenge, 139 and 370 London, Dent.Google Scholar
Challis, A. J. and Harding, D. W., 1975. Later Prehistory from The Trent to The Tyne, 32, 34, and 189. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 20.Google Scholar
Longworth, I. H., 1984. Collared Urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland, 260 and plate 26. Cambridge, University Press.Google Scholar
May, J. and Wheeler, H. M., 1971. ‘The Trent Valley Project’, Curr. Archaeol. 3, 75.Google Scholar
O'Brien, C., 1978. East Midlands Archaeological Bulletin 12 Supplement 8.Google Scholar
Tomalin, D. J., 1983. British Biconical Urns: Their Charac and Chronoloğy and Their Relationship with Indigenous Early Bronze Age Ceramics, 246. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Southampton.Google Scholar
Trent Valley Archaeological Research Committee Report, 1968, 2 and 3.Google Scholar
Trent Valley Archaeological Research Committee Report, 1969, 3.Google Scholar
Trent Valley Archaeological Research Committee Report, 1973, 2.Google Scholar
Vine, P. M., 1982. The Neolithic and Bronze Age Cultures of the Middle and Upper Trent Basin, 36. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

References in which the site of Pasture Lodge Farm, Lincs., was referred to as Long Bennington, Lincs.

Burğess, C., 1980. The Age of Stonehenge, 139 and 272. London, Dent.Google Scholar
Greenfield, E., 1985. ‘Five Bronze Age Round Barrows at Ponton Heath, Stroxton, Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire Hist. Archaeol. 20, 35.Google Scholar
May, J., 1976. Prehistoric Lincolnshire, 85–89, fig. 49 and 50. Lincoln, History of Lincoln Committee.Google Scholar
O'Brien, C., 1978. East Midlands Archaeological Bulletin 12 Supplement 8.Google Scholar
Tomalin, D. J., 1983. British Biconical Urns: Their Characte and Chronology and their Relationship with Indigenous Early Bronze Age Ceramics, 246. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Southampton.Google Scholar
Vine, P. M., 1982. The Neolithic and Bronze Age Cultures of the Middle and Upper Trent Basin, 37. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 105.Google Scholar
Wheeler, H.M., 1978. East Midlands Archaeological Bulletin 12, 21.Google Scholar

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, F. T., 1954. The Prehistoric Settlement of Lincolnshire. M.A. Thesis, University of Nottingham.Google Scholar
Barrett, J., 1976. ‘Deverel-Rimbury: problems of chronology and interpretations’, in Burgess, C. and Miket, R. (eds). Settlement and Economy in the Third and Second Millennia B.C., 289–307. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 33.Google Scholar
Barrett, J. C., 1980. ‘The pottery of the later Bronze Age in lowland England’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. 46, 297–319.Google Scholar
Bateman, J., 1976–1977. ‘A Late Bronze Age cremation cemetery and Iron Age/Romano-British enclosures in the Parish of Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire’, Trans. Birmingham Warwickshire Archaeol. Soc. 88, 9–48.Google Scholar
Black, C. A. (ed.), 1965. Methods of Soil Analysis, Part 2. Madison, American Society of Agronomy Inc. Google Scholar
Bradley, R., 1984. The social foundations of prehistoric Britain, London, Longman.Google Scholar
Bulleid, A. and St George Gray, H., 1911. The Glastonbury Lake Village, Volume 1. The Glastonbury Antiquarian Society.Google Scholar
Burstow, G. P. and Holleyman, G. A., 1957. ‘Late Bronze Age settlement on Itford Hill, Sussex’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. 23, 167–212.Google Scholar
Chowne, P., 1979. ‘Billingborough’, Curr. Archaeol. 67, 246–48.Google Scholar
Chowne, P., forthcoming. Excavations at Billingborough Fen, Lincolnshire, 1975–78. Norwich, East Anglian Archaeology, Fenland Monograph Series.Google Scholar
Clay, R. C. C., 1927. ‘A Late Bronze Age urnfield at Pokesdown, Hants’, Antiq. J. 7, 464–84.Google Scholar
Collingwood, R. G. and Richmond, I., 1969. The Archaeology of Roman Britain (revised ed.). London, Methuen.Google Scholar
Ellison, A. B., 1975. Pottery and Settlements of the Later Bronze Age in Southern England. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ellison, A. B., 1976–1977. ‘A petrological study of samples of the Bronze Age pottery’, in Bateman, J., ‘A Late Bronze Age Cremation Cemetery and Iron Age/Romano-British Enclosures in the Parish of Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire’, Trans. Birmingham Warwickshire Archaeol. Soc. 88, 19–20.Google Scholar
Ellison, A. B., 1980. ‘Deverel-Rimbury urn cemeteries: the evidence for social organisation’, in Barrett, J. C. and Bradley, R. (eds), Settlement and Society in the British Later Bronze Age, 115–26. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 83.Google Scholar
Ellison, A. B., 1982. ‘A spatial analysis of the Simons Ground urn cemeteries’, in White, D. A., The Bronze Age Cremation Cemeteries at Simons Ground, Dorset, 59–64. Dorchester, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Monograph Series 3.Google Scholar
Erith, F. H. and Longworth, I. H., 1960. ‘A Bronze Age urnfield on Vinces Farm, Ardleigh, Essex’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. 26, 178–92.Google Scholar
Flügel, E., 1982. Microfacies Analysis of Limestones. Berlin, Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenfield, E., 1985. ‘Five Bronze Age round barrows at Ponton Heath, Stroxton, Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire Hist. Archaeol. 20, 35–44.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, R. W., 1971. The Chemistry and Physics of Clays (4th ed. revised). London, Ernest Benn.Google Scholar
Hawkes, C. F. C., 1935. ‘The pottery from the sites on Plumpton Plain’, in Holleyman, G. A. and Curwen, E. C., ‘Late Bronze Age lynchet settlements on Plumpton Plain, Sussex’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. 1, 39–59.Google Scholar
Leary, R. S., unpublished. ‘Excavations of a Romano-British settlement at Pasture Lodge Farm, Long Bennington, Lincs., by Hazel Wheeler’.Google Scholar
Longworth, I. H., 1984. Collared Urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, University Press.Google Scholar
McInnes, I. J., 1968. ‘The excavation of a Bronze Age cemetery at Catfoss, East Yorkshire’, E. Riding Archaeol. 1, 1–10.Google Scholar
May, J., 1976. Prehistoric Lincolnshire. Lincoln, History of Lincolnshire Committee.Google Scholar
Moore, W. R. G., 1971. ‘Chapel Brampton. Interim report on the excavation of a middle or late Bronze Age Cremation Cemetery’, Bull, of the Northants. Fed. of Archaeol. Soc. 5, 1–2.Google Scholar
Morgan, K. W., 1953. The Religion of the Hindus. New York, The Ronald Press Company.Google Scholar
Ó Ríordáin, S. P., 1938. ‘A Bronze Age find from Oldtown Kilcashel, Co. Roscommon’, Galway Archaeol. Hist. Soc. 18, 40–42.Google Scholar
Peacock, D. P. S., 1977. Pottery and Early Commerce. London, Academic Press.Google Scholar
Petersen, F. F., 1981. The excavation of a Bronze Age cemetery on Knighton Heath, Dorset. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 98.Google Scholar
Phillips, C. W., 1933. ‘The present state of archaeology in Lincolnshire, Part I’, Archaeol. J. 90, 106–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piggott, C. M., 1938. ‘A Middle Bronze Age barrow and Deverel-Rimbury urnfield, at Latch Farm, Christchurch, Hampshire’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. 4, 169–87.Google Scholar
Pryor, F. M. M., 1978. Excavation at Fengate, Peterborough, England: The Second Report. Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum Archaeology Monograph 5.Google Scholar
Pryor, F. M. M., 1980. Excavation atFengate, Peterborough, England: The Third Report. Northampton, Northamptonshire Archaeological Society Monograph 1.Google Scholar
Salisbury, C., Whitley, P. J., Litton, C. D. and Fox, J. L., 1984. ‘Flandrian courses of the River Trent at Colwick, Nottingham’, Mercian Geologist 9, 189–207.Google Scholar
Stanford, S. C., 1982. ‘Bromfield, Shropshire — Neolithic, Beaker and Bronze Age sites, 1966–79’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. 48, 279–320.Google Scholar
Stevenson, R. B. K., 1953. ‘Prehistoric pot building in Europe’, Man 53, 65–68.Google Scholar
Terry, R. D. and Chilingar, G. V., 1955. ‘Summary of “Concerning some additional aids in studying sedimentary formations”, by M. S. Shvetsov’, J. Sedimentary Petrology 25, 229–34.Google Scholar
Thorpe, I. J., 1984. ‘Ritual, power and ideology: a reconstruction of Earlier Neolithic rituals in Wessex’, in Bradley, R., and Gardiner, J. (eds), Neolithic Studies: a review of some current research, 41–60. Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser. 133.Google Scholar
Tomalin, D. J., 1983. British Biconical Urns: their character and chronology and their relationship with indigenous Early Bronze Age ceramics. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Southampton.Google Scholar
Wainwright, G. J. and Longworth, I. H., 1971. Durrington Walls: Excavations 1966–68. Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 29.Google Scholar
Wells, C., 1960. ‘A study of cremation’, Antiquity 34, 29–37.Google Scholar
White, D. A., 1982. The Bronze Age Cremation Cemeteries at Simons Ground, Dorset. Dorchester, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Monograph Series No. 3.Google Scholar
Williams, J. Ll. W. and Jenkins, D. A., 1976. ‘The use of petrographic, heavy mineral and arc spectrographic techniques in assessing the provenance of sediments used in ceramics’, in Davidson, D. A. and Shackley, M. L. (eds), Geoarchaeology, 115–35. London, Duckworth.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Allen, Harman and Wheeler supplementary material

Allen, Harman and Wheeler supplementary material

Download Allen, Harman and Wheeler supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 24.2 MB