Funerary and Related Cups of the British Bronze Age

by Claire Copper, Alex Gibson, Deborah Hallam

Overview

Funerary and related cups of the British Bronze Age presents the first national corpus and study of these often highly decorated items. Cups are the least studied of all Bronze Age funerary ceramics and their interpretations are still based on antiquarian speculation. They are clearly 'Urnes of no small Variety' and previous attempts at classification have largely failed due to this variation. Their potential uses, technologies and associations are examined and many myths, such as their association with children and their role in accompanying other ceramics such as Collared Urns and Food Vessels are examined and questioned. Cups appear to have been grave goods in their own right and the term 'accessory vessel' is rejected. The book contains a fully referenced and illustrated national corpus that will form the basis for future studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781803271668
Publisher:	Archaeopress Publishing
Publication date:	06/30/2022
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.81(w) x 9.65(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claire Copper, an experienced field archaeologist and established member of the supervisory team at the Ness of Brodgar excavations in Orkney, completed her MPhil on the Bronze Age funerary cups of southern England in 2017 at the University of Bradford. Her current doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh is funded by the Margaret Stewart Bequest and builds upon her MSc Res study of the Beaker pottery of northern Britain and the Netherlands. Alex Gibson has worked in the field of Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology for the last 40 years with the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust, English Heritage and the University of Bradford. He has published extensively on Neolithic/BA pottery, ritual monuments and sepulchral practices and has written over 150 specialist reports on Neolithic and BA ceramics. Deborah Hallam, following a career in industry, entered the University of Bradford as a mature student to study for a BA in Archaeology. She went on to complete an MPhil by research and is currently researching for a Ph D on the Neolithic of the Yorkshire Dales.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1: A Potted History of Cups Chapter 2: Cup Forms, Fabrics, Surface Treatments and Motifs Chapter 3: Observations on the Technology and Use of Bronze Age Ceramic Cups Chapter 4: The Archaeological Contexts of Cups Chapter 5: Cups and Human Remains Chapter 6: Associations and Chronology Chapter 7: Cups: An Overview Corpus Bibliography Appendix 1: Cup-Associated Burials Appendix 2: The Association of Cups with Other Ceramics Appendix 3: Cups and Associated Artefacts

Editorial Reviews

"This book provides a new and welcome synthesis of a particularly enigmatic group of Bronze Age ceramics, which have been variously named, but which the authors choose to classify, justifiably, as cups. Drawing on a large dataset of over 770 cups collated by the authors from England, Scotland, and Wales, it provides a concise and logically ordered discussion of these objects, covering earlier research, physical form, construction, contexts, associations (particularly with human remains), and chronology, before concluding with the catalogue of material." Edward Caswell (2023): Current Archaeology 395 "Overall, the text dispels a number of misinterpretations about cups and their usage and, more importantly, discusses each aspect covered from the perspective of the most up-to-date modern understanding of funerary archaeology and its ceramics. The authors are to be congratulated in bringing this range of data on funerary cups to publication and providing a resource long needed for the British Early Bronze Age." Henrietta Quinnell (2023): Archaeologia Cambrensis Vol. 172

From the Publisher