A Contribution to the Study of Glastonbury Ware from South-Western Britain

Abstract

SummaryA petrological study of the rock inclusions present in Early Iron Age Glastonbury ware suggests that the raw materials for pottery making were not usually obtained on or near the find-sites, but from specific localities throughout south-western England. Since each of the petrological groups has its own range of typological traits there is reason to believe that the completed pots, rather than the materials, were transported, suggesting the activity of specialist potters working from production centres. The relevance of the new evidence to the origin of the decorative styles and the cultural interpretation of the pottery is briefly discussed.

Retention of Phosphate in Buried Ceramics: An Electron Microbeam Approach

“…( 2 ) 12156Y Glastonbury Ware bowl, incised curvilinear decoration, Peacock (1969) fabric 1 (gabbro), excavated Kent's Cavern, Devon.…”

Excavations at Hog Cliff Hill, Maiden Newton, Dorset

“…Following quantification, most undiagnostic body sherds were discarded. The Roman base sherd examined possesses a particularly distinctive fabric whose petrology closely resembles Peacock's (1969) description of the gabbroic clays of the Lizard peninsula, and there seems little doubt that this was also the origin of the vessel concerned. The fabric descriptions are summarized in table 1.…”

Perspectives on Ethnicity

“…7 In a review of anthropological and archaeological approaches to ethnicity Olsen and Kobylinski (1991:23;my 8 It is this critical break between ethnicity and the habitus (see also Chapter 5) which distinguishes the theory adopted here from that of Burley et al (1992) who argue for a much more direct relationship between ethnicity and the habitus following on from Bentley's (1987) work. 9 A similar argument is adopted by the Binfords (1966; see also Binford 1973) in their criticism of ethnic interpretations of Mousterian lithic assemblages, and by Peacock (1969Peacock ( , 1979 in his critique of ethnic interpretations of regional pottery styles in Iron Age Britain. 10 Olsen and Kobylinski (1991:16) have adopted a similar position, arguing that archaeologists should attempt to investigate the ways in which basic value orientations and their behavioural effects underlie the maintenance of ethnic boundaries.…”

“…In a few instances the distribution of particular styles of pottery has been re-examined and socio-economic explanations advocated in opposition to the traditional ethnic interpretation (e.g. Peacock 1969; see also the debate between Blackmore et al 1979 andPeacock 1979). Moreover, the nature of late Iron Age stylistic distributions, and their relationship to ethnic groups, has occasionally been critically examined (e.g.…”

“…Whether or not economic explanations are offered for particular styles of material (e.g. Peacock 1969Peacock , 1979, or the boundaries of ethnic groups themselves are reanalysed in terms of socio-economic and political factors (e.g. Blackmore et al 1979), the late Iron Age is still conceptualized as a mosaic of bounded monolithic ethnic or tribal units.…”