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1884.35.61.7

Ceramic sherd

1884.35.61.7

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Collection type
Object
Description
Ceramic sherd
Long description
Ceramic sherd of coarse ware pottery with mineral temper (<15%). Oxidise fired exterior [orange in colour] and reduce fired interior surface [sandy brown]. Glue and paper present on the surface indicating it was once attached to a ?display board. [CG [Excav. PR] 29/01/2013]
Date / Period
Archaeological period: Bronze Age, uncertain
Date collected
1867 Oct
Acquisition information
Donated: 1884
Materials and processes
Material Pottery, Process Handbuilt
Dimensions
Thick: max 8 mm, Width: max 38 mm, Length: max 42 mm, Weight 15 g
Object numbers
Accession number: 1884.35.61.7 PR Cat other PR nos: 47
Research and responses

Pitt Rivers excavated at Highdown Hill in September and/or October 1867, providing an account of his work on pages 74-6 of 'Further Remarks on the Hill Forts of Sussex: Being an Account of Excavations in the Forts at Cissbury and Highdown', by Augustus Henry Lane Fox [Pitt Rivers], in Archaeologia, Vol. 42 (1868), pp. 53-76. It seems safe to assume that all the material from Highdown Hill in the founding collection (1884.35.61, 1884.119.292, 1884.140.149, 1884.140.241) comes from this excavation, the finds from which included pottery, skeletal material including two skulls, and a socketed knife. [AP; JC 24 8 2006]

Pitt Rivers's finds are referred to briefly on page 203 of The Archaeology of Sussex (The County Archaeologies), by E. Cecil Curwen, London: Methuen (1937): '...Pitt Rivers found a curious stepped pit in which were a socketed bronze knife and part of a large pottery vessel, as well as much other pottery.' Also on page 186 of The Archaeology of Sussex (2nd edn), by E. Cecil Curwen, London: Methuen (1954): 'In 1869 [sic] Pitt Rivers digging inside the fort found a curious stepped pit in which were a socketed bronze knife and part of a large pottery vessel, as well as much other pottery.' [JC 25 8 2006]

For an account of Pitt Rivers's excavations in Sussex in 1867, see pages 67 ff in Pitt Rivers: The Life and Archaeological Work of Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, DCL, FRS, FSA, by Mark Bowden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1991). [AP; JC 25 8 2006]

Associated publications
Lane Fox, A.H. 1869. Further Remarks on the Hill Forts of Sussex: Being an account of the excavations in the Forts of Cissbury and Highdown. Archaeologia 42: 53-76. [Dan Hicks 13/11/2013]

Search terms: Vessel, Pottery, Sherd

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