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Figure 1: Later Iron Age decorated vessels from Glastonbury (Somerset), Old Sleaford (Lincs.) and Bramdean (Hants.). (Photo courtesy JD Hill, British Museum.)
How many later prehistoric pottery collections are there in England? This simple question was the basis for a survey funded by English Heritage at the instigation of the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group. The goal of the survey was to create a register of all the collections which date between the Late Bronze Age and the Late Iron Age, c.1000 BC-AD 50, and to complement this with a bibliography of published collections.
From January 1996 to October 1998, a team of 21 surveyors from across the country was engaged in the desktop recording of as many collections as they could find. This recording was conducted using a single-page proforma which requested the following information about each collection: date of record, survey area, name of collection, county, parish, NGR, SMR, Scheduled Ancient Monuments code, type of site using the RCHME Thesaurus of Monument Types (1995), current location of collection, final curatorial location, method of recovery (excavation, fieldwalking, evaluation, pipeline, causal pick-up, watching brief, other, no information available), size of collection, date range, and whether the collection had been published. Museums, units, amateur groups and individual collectors were contacted by the local surveyor.
If the collection had been published and that information was available in the public domain, then details derived from the publication were recorded using a second, single-page proforma. This requested a full reference for the publication, and the following information if available: number and weight of the sherds, 'condition' of collection (total profiles, partial profiles, measurable rims, rims present but diameters not reconstructable), other pottery present at site by date range, other ceramic artefacts recovered with the later prehistoric collection (briquetage, clay weight, clay spindle whorl, crucible, mould, oven/hearth furniture, other clay artefact), other non-ceramic artefacts (copper alloy object, iron object, quern, slag, worked bone object, stone weight, stone whorl, worked flint), details about deep stratification on site (ditches with more than one layer, rampart, well, midden, quarry hollows, house/yard floor, other), pits (how many), structures (curvilinear/drip gully, posthole round structure, 4 or 6 post structure, fence lines, grave, shrine, rectangular building, square barrow, other), contextual details for the later prehistoric pottery specifically, presence of an archive and scientific reports about or associated with the later prehistoric pottery (radiocarbon dating, TL dating, petrological analysis, heavy mineral analysis, X-RF spectroscopy, neutron activation analysis, residue analysis, other).
The survey discovered 7138 collections of later prehistoric pottery in England of which 2032 (29%) are published. The proforma data about these collections were entered into a relational database using Access software. The database is currently maintained at the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton and known as The Later Prehistoric Pottery Collections Register and Bibliography for England: a Gazetteer.
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Figure 2: Contrasting distributions of specifically Late Bronze Age and Late Iron Age pottery collections available on the Gazetteer database. (Prepared by G. Earl, University of Southampton.)
What is the data like? What kinds of information are there?
For example, there are 272 known later prehistoric pottery collections in Berkshire and 85 of these are published representing over 30% in print. In contrast Norfolk has 799 collections but only 4% of these are published because 605 of these are from fieldwalking. The most common method of recovering later prehistoric pottery in this country is by excavation (38%), with 23% by fieldwalking. More recent techniques of evaluation, watching brief and pipeline investigations have 3% produced new collections. However, across the country the method of recovery is highly varied in Hampshire, the commonest form is by excavation (33%) but in Northamptonshire collections were more frequently recovered through fieldwalking (42%). Watching briefs, evaluations and pipeline work have had a greater impact on recovery in Northamptonshire (28%) than in Hampshire (11%).
Artefact scatters account for the most frequent type of site from which collections had been derived (24%), while the more famous hillforts make up only 5% of all collections. Settlements (enclosed, unenclosed and undefined ones) account for 31%.
But what about the size of these collections? Only three registered collections, Danebury (Hampshire), Potterne (Wiltshire) and Dragonby (Lincolnshire), have extremely large assemblages of more than 50,000 sherds. There are only eight other sites with more than 20,000 sherds. The majority of published collections consist of less than 3000 sherds and 51% have less than 1000 sherds in them.
Do you want to know more? If you have access to the Internet, then you can explore the database.
Or would you like some of the data on disk or a printout of a special query of your own? This is available by contacting The Gazetteer Co-ordinator, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK who will tell you the cost for the production of data onto a disk in either Access or Excel or for making the query and sending you the printout.
The Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group (PCRG) is committed to the maintenance of this database with annual updating of the register and the addition of new collections as they are found. However, this is dependent upon the information being made available through planning authorities and other interested parties. A recommendation in the report about the survey results submitted to English Heritage has proposed that curators should require applicants for planning permission to provide data about any later prehistoric pottery collections discovered through their interventions, using the survey proforma. This would prevent any continuation of the major impediment which all surveyors discovered during their searches the standard of information presentation in most reports is highly variable; obvious details such as the size of assemblages or the NGR were not always provided.
The Gazetteer is more than just a list of collections. It is a tremendous new resource for the investigation and management of not only later prehistoric pottery but also the later prehistory of England.