interesting prehistoric pottery from our site at Long Melford

Yesterday (19th January), Trust pottery specialist Steve Benfield and Trust volunteer Wendie were working on the bags of pottery fragments from the site which we excavated at Long Melford in Suffolk in early 2015. Wendie was carefully piecing and glueing fragments together to reconstruct vessels so that their profiles can be drawn by Trust archaeologist Emma Holloway. The drawn profiles will then be included in the site report. However, Steve can identify pottery fabrics and vessel forms and suggest dates for vessels from just single fragments…

Long Melford is a historic town in Suffolk. Our site was located within the area of a known Roman settlement and Roman burials, with the line of a known Roman road to the south. We did excavate evidence of Roman occupation on the site, including about ten burials and very large quantities of fragments of animal bone and Roman pottery, but we also excavated large quantities of Late Iron Age domestic pottery. Steve dates the Late Iron Age pottery to about the middle of the 1st century AD, that is, during the period of the Roman conquest. This pottery is all grog-tempered and demonstrates the Late Iron Age origins of the Roman settlement here. The Late Iron Age pottery includes some interesting elements.

Of the Late Iron Age pottery, there is a group of almost-complete fragmentary vessels which derives from one or two pits (F3/F4). The almost-complete vessels are mostly jars, with some platters and beakers, including butt-beakers, which constitutes a usual Iron Age pottery assemblage. However, being a group of almost-complete vessels suggests that they were deposited at the same time or over a short period of time. One of the beakers is of a large ‘barrel’ form. The jars would have been used for the storage of foods and for cooking, and some display residues of ‘scale’, caused by hard water, on their interior, and sooting on their exterior. Two jars from one feature make an interesting duo, as the base of one has been removed and a small neat hole has been made in the base of the other.

Another feature on the site produced an unusual bowl on a base, and this is Roman. It has a burnished orange-brown interior surface and may be a local regional product: Steve suggests a date of perhaps the 2nd century for this. The bowl is similar in shape to a stamp-decorated bowl form, but it is plain, as well as being unusually heavy. Steve will conduct further research on the bowl as he writes his report on all the pottery from the site.

Wendie and Steve were assisted by a new volunteer on the Trust’s team: Cecilia, who is from Rome, will be working with us here at the Roman circus centre for several weeks.

The images show Wendie with Cecilia, and just three of the almost-complete pottery vessels, including the jar with the hole in the base and the unusual bowl (the second and third vessels below).

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