Ceramics home: Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age.

Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age

In Britain, pottery emerges 'fully formed' in the centuries after 4000 BC. The Museum's collection is small but reasonably representative of the range of ceramics circulating in the Thames valley between this time and the eve of the Roman conquest. Much of it was casually recovered during river dredging or gravel digging operations.

Most vessels are hand-made, bonfire-fired and likely to be of local manufacture. Forms encompass Neolithic round-based open bowls used for storage or cooking, flat-based beakers and larger Early and Middle Bronze Age urns placed with (or containing the ashes of) the dead, and later Bronze Age and Iron Age jars, cups and bowls used to prepare and serve food and drink.

A range of materials were employed to 'open' or temper the clays, including crushed burnt flint, fired clay ('grog') pellets and quartz sand. Many of the vessels also bear impressed or incised decoration using finger-tips, finger-nails, bird-bones, toothed combs and twisted cord or string.

Featured types

Peterborough ware (-3400 - -2500)

Late Neolithic & Early Bronze Age Beakers (-2400 - -1800)

Collared urns (-2200 - -1400)

Deverel-Rimbury (-1600 - -1000)

Post Deverel-Rimbury (-1000 - -700)

Iron Age (-700 - 50)

Related objects

There are 77 related objects.

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74.284/70 perforated object. Late Bronze Age	38.188 pot.	A26497 urn. Middle Bronze Age	A19480 urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age
A19132 urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age	A10977a urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age	A10977b urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age	A10977c urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age
A10977d urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age	A10977e urn; bucket urn . Middle Bronze Age	NN24812 vessel.	NN24813 vessel.
NN24814 vessel.	NN24815 vessel.	A10781 vessel. Bronze Age	C945 vessel. Earlier Neolithic
A10558 vessel. Earlier Neolithic	A10560 vessel. Earlier Neolithic	NN17447 vessel. Earlier Neolithic	89.77 vessel. Late Bronze Age
A10217 vessel. Later Neolithic-Early Bronze Age	68.117 vessel. Neolithic	A13664 vessel. Neolithic	C946 vessel. Neolithic

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