The Hembury bowl and gabbro clay

This is the Hembury bowl. It’s curated and on permanent exhibition at Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter.  It was found by Dorothy Liddell in the 1930’s, whilst excavating the Iron Age Hillfort.  During the excavation, the Causewayed Enclosure was found at the north end with a considerable amount of Neolithic pottery. The chronologies for this period were constructed by Stuart Piggott based on the assemblages and stratification of Windmill Hill which was excavated in the late 1920's.

It wasn't until the 1960's that Peacock used petrographic, thin section analysis techniques to determine the  provenance of archaeological ceramics.  He determined that the Hembury bowl was made from gabbro clay from the Lizard.  This threw up  the question - were the potters transporting the clay or the pots from the Lizard? re-enacting a chaine operatoire can maybe enlighten this quandary. I dig out clay and don't make the pots on the site, I take it home with me to my workplace and make the pots there.

Chronology is vital here and the recent work of   Alastair Whittle in Gathering Time: Dating the early Neolithic Enclosures in Southern Britain and Ireland (Whittle et al, 2011) sets out The Bayesian recalibration of older C14 dates highlighting the errors that had accrued in chronologies and pushed back the start of the Neolithic by between 1000-2000 years. The period under consideration in this dissertation is in a range of two to three hundred years.
One of the earliest dates for the period is from Broadsands chambered tomb, nr Torquay, (Sheridan et al, 2008), at 3940cal BC- and there are a few sherds of quartz tempered pottery associated with the human remains in the tomb. Hembury and Helman Tor, have the earliest C14 dates for enclosures in the region and were being constructed approximately 3700calBC. The C14 dates from Hembury were from residues on ceramic and Helman Tor from charcoal. (Whittle et al 2011). C14 dates for Raddon are based on charcoal samples and the enclosure was likely in use for only a hundred years (Whittle et al 2011).

Bibliography-I will annotate this( this is a provisional Bibliography).

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H. Quinnel  No 26    1 - 7

G. Smith    No 26   13 – 67

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, Volume 1. University of Oxford, 2003 - 1120 pages

Harrad, L.(2004) Gabbroic clay sources ijn Cornwall: A petrographic analysis of prehistoric pottery and clay samples. Oxford Journal of Archaeology. Vol23,Issue 3. Pp271-286.

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RCHME: Industry and Enclosure in the Neolithic: Hembury http://www.pastscape.org.uk/monumentinfo.aspx?a=0&hob_id=1181774 Accessed 22/12/12

SOCIAL LIVES OF POTS (chair: Elaine Morris) http://www.southampton.ac.uk/innovationconference/conference/abstracts.page Accessed online 22/12/12

Peacock, DPS 1969 neolithic Pot production Cornwall. Antiquity 43 Peacock, DPS, 1969 Neolithic pot production in Cornwall. Antiquity 43. 145-149.

Smith, I. Causewayed Enclosures. Page(s)89-112

Thomas. J, (1999) Understanding the Neolithic. London. Routledge.

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Whittle. A, (2003). The Archaeology of people: Dimensions of Neolithic Life. London. Routledge.

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Wood, I. (2011)Changing the fabric of life in post-Roman and early medieval Cornwall : an investigation into social change through petrographic analysis Thesis (Ph.D.) - Exeter University, College of Humanities.

Web Sources.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VNbdcDqHM

http://www.st-keverne.com/history/arch/gabbroic-clay.html

Harrads Bibliography

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Liddell, DM. 1931, Report on the Excavations at Hembury Fort. Proceedings of Devon Archaeological Society 1:3., 90-120.

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