Appendix: Spong Hill Data

Summary

The dataset available at the White Rose Repository for Harland, ‘Deconstructing Anglo-Saxon Archaeology’ forms the basis for discussion of Spong Hill cremation urn typology and its implications in Chapter 6. Pots were assigned to Perry's typology on the basis of the following set of calculations, applied to the Spong Hill dataset produced by Catherine Hills and Sam Lucy. A new ‘Ratio 1’ was first devised because, though the final volume of Spong Hill describes Ratio 1 as Maximum Diameter over height, the dataset does the reverse of this. The specific figures utilised to apply categories to the results of these ratio calculations were determined from the quartiles (Q) calculated for the data distribution for a given ratio of dimensions from every pot from the corpus.

Several other new categories were applied to the Spong Hill dataset as follows: pots were sorted into ‘Squat’ if their Ratio 1 was greater than 1.2. All others were deemed ‘Not Squat.’ Pots were labelled ‘Roughly Equal’ if their Ratio 1 figure was between Q1 and Q3 (i.e., neither squat nor tall). If the Rim Diameter/Maximum diameter (Spong Hill Ratio 4, Perry's Ratio 5) was less than 0.6 a pot was deemed to have a ‘Restricted Rim.’ If Ratio 4 was greater than 0.6 (the median value for that ratio's distribution) it was deemed to have an ‘Open Rim.’ If Ratio 1 was greater than 1.06 it was deemed ‘Not Tall,’ otherwise it was deemed ‘Tall.’ A pot was sorted into Group 1 if it was deemed ‘Roughly Equal’ with ‘Restricted Rim.’ A pot was sorted into Group 2/3 if it was deemed ‘Squat’ with an ‘Open Rim.’

A pot was sorted into Group 4 if it was deemed ‘Roughly Equal’ with an ‘Open Rim.’ A pot was sorted into Group 5 if it was deemed ‘Tall’ with an ‘Open Rim.’ A pot was sorted into Group 6 if it was deemed ‘Squat’ with a ‘Restricted Rim.’