'Add To Cart' items are ready to send straight away. Please be aware that if bought alongside 'Pre-order' items, your order will be sent when all items are ready.
'Pre-order' items are made to order, and we will dispatch them as soon as we have handcrafted them for you; this usually takes 90 days, but international orders can take a little longer.
Details
We have faithfully recreated this magnificent beaker from the early Bronze Age; we have based it on an exciting find from the grave of a man dating to around 2300 BCE, known by many as the Amesbury Archer. This fantastic find was one of several treasures unearthed by archaeologists during excavations at Amesbury near Stonehenge.
Skilfully made and carefully decorated with a bone comb tool; this beaker is a beautiful example of beaker pottery from this period. The occupant of the grave where archaeologists found the original beaker was a man of great importance. His resting place contained several pots, flints, knives and jewellery, including gold hair ornaments.
Beaker pottery is a style of pottery that entered Britain from Continental Europe around 2500 BCE, at a time when the first metals, copper and gold, were being seen in this country.
Find number: 6597
Context
Around 2500 BCE Britain saw the first use of metal such as Gold and Copper, and alongside these new materials came pottery beakers. Often considered to mark the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age, it was a time of significant change, with some research studies claiming that a vast proportion of Britons were replaced by a wave of migrants from Europe. In terms of pottery, this change resulted in a bloom of creativity where potters showed off their skills by creating highly decorated pottery forms.
Materials
Smoke fired Terracotta
Dimensions
Approx. 155 mm tall 170 mm diameter
Production
As with all our Museum Quality Replicas, we have made this pot as the original would have been made entirely by hand from natural clay and using replicas of the types of tool that the Bronze-Age makers would have used. In keeping with the original pot, we have applied the decoration using a bone comb.
Firing
We have fired this pot to emulate the ancient firing conditions. The original pot was fired in an open wood fire, in close contact with the fuel, a process that leaves its mark on the clay as variations in the surface colour. However, the low temperatures achieved in open firings also result in relatively weak pots, so this pot has been fired to a somewhat higher temperature to strengthen it, in a unique firing process that allows me to achieve an authentic appearance to the pot.
Health and Safety
This pot is a Museum Quality Replica made using the tools and techniques that ancient potters would have used during the Neolithic era. As this is an unglazed pot with a porous surface, it will absorb some of the flavours during the cooking process, which does add to the taste of future dishes. However, it does also mean that this pot does not meet modern Health and Safety standards, and therefore, we do not advise that it be used for cooking. When Neolithic cooks cooked in these pots, they relied on applying sufficient heat to the pot and contents to ensure that heat killed all bacteria. Heating to over 70°C for at least 10 minutes would have killed most disease-causing bacteria, and temperatures of 100°C would do even more.
Postage
We send all items using a second class postal service; if you wish to have an item sent first class, please contact me for a quote. Many Thanks
