The Pottery of the Later Bronze Age in Lowland England

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of pottery styles in southern and eastern England during the first half of the first millennium B.C. The region discussed is Hawkes' Southern Province (1959, fig. 1), and excursions will also be made into the Eastern Province (fig. 1).The discussion of settlement sequences, and the dating of individual sites, is still largely dependent upon ceramic refuse derived from such sites. The analysis of settlement patterns for the earlier part of the first millennium B.C. thus rests upon our understanding of the ceramic traditions of that period, and this has led to considerable confusion. Two problems must be isolated at the outset. The first results from the re-evaluation of British Bronze Age chronology which took place in the 1950's, leading to Hawkes' 1960 scheme and then to Burgess' rather rigid reading of the evidence nine years later (Butler and Smith 1956; Smith, M. A. 1959; Smith, I. F. 1961; Hawkes 1960; Burgess 1969). The main effect, if we are to follow Burgess, was to draw Beakers, Food Vessels and most Urn forms back into an early Bronze Age the end of which, around 1400 B.C., was marked by the end of the Wessex grave series. As for the Middle and Late Bronze Age Burgess concluded that ‘over much of the British Isles there are no settlements, burials, defended sites, pottery, or other non-metallic cultural material which can safely be assigned to the Middle or Late Bronze Age. There are a few localized exceptions such as the Deverel-Rimbury culture and Flat-rim ware’ (Burgess 1969, 29).