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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
BY the courtesy of Mr. Arthur Deane, F.R.S.E., M.R.I.A., Curator of the Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, Belfast, I am permitted to direct attention to a vessel of outstanding interest among the magnificent collection of Irish prehistoric pottery under his charge. For help in studying it during visits to Belfast in September 1930 and 1931, I would express my gratitude also to his Staff and to Miss M. Gaffikin, whose photographs are here reproduced (pl. XL).
The pot (no. 332–1924) appears to be a degenerate example of a beaker of the Early Bronze Age. It came to the Museum with the collection of the late Mr. J. Theodore Richardson, then living at Cultra, co. Down, in July 1924: the manuscript list describes it as ‘No. 12, Cinerary Urn from near Bushmills’, but no positive evidence is extant to show that it was associated with a burial and no particulars of its discovery are forthcoming. This is the more regrettable on account of the rare occurrence of beakers in Ireland.
page 259 note 1 For valued assistance in the preparation of this record, I am further indebted to Dr. J. Graham Callander, LL.D., F.S.A. Scot., Mrs. M. E. Cunnington, Dr. Eliot Curwen, F.S.A., Dr. Cyril Fox, F.S.A., and Mr. Stuart Piggott.
page 259 note 2 Inside the pot is a visiting-card of Mr. J. Theodore Richardson, Killowen, Lisburn, on the back of which is written ‘Ancient Irish Cinerary Urn. (From New Bushmills)’: the word ‘New’ has been deleted. In presenting his collection, Mr. Richardson wrote (17th July 1924) that he had ‘bought most of the implements, cinerary urns, etc., at sales’. With his papers is a catalogue of the sale of Wm. Gray, M.R.I.A., Belfast, 1897, which includes no. 170, ‘One Irish Cinerary Urn’, and another similarly described: the sites of discovery are not given.
page 259 note 3 Abercromby, Hon. John, Bronze Age Pottery (1912), vol. i, table of beaker types, p. 44.Google Scholar
page 261 note 1 Beakers with bevelled rims are particularly characteristic of East Anglia, and Dr. Cyril Fox has suggested that this feature was derived from contact with the native neolithic culture (Archaeology of the Cambridge Region (1923), p. 40, pl. II, 3:Google ScholarArchaeologia Cambrensis, 1925, p. 16, with list of English examples).Google Scholar
This feature is unknown on Irish beakers and is rare in Scotland: an example from Stoneykirk, Wigtown, was illustrated in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. xxxvi (1902), pp. 584–9, fig. I: for other references see below, pp. 263–4.Google Scholar
page 261 note 2 e.g. Abercromby, B.A.P. i, figs. 32, 37, 40, 66, 86, 126, 127, 144, 166, 181, 184, 230, 237, 266, 288, to mention only a few specimens. The Irish beaker from Mount Stewart (fig. 223) evidently had a well-defined foot.
page 261 note 3 e.g. the beaker from Cyffic, Carmarthenshire (Fox, C., Arch. Camb., 1925, p. 3, fig. 1)Google Scholar.
page 261 note 4 The only beaker with a similar shallow groove seems to be one in Devizes Museum (Stourhead Catalogue, no. 243, p. 63, fig.), found with the skeleton of a young man in barrow 13, Wilsford, Wilts. Mrs. M. E. Cunnington kindly allowed me to examine this pot. At the angle of the body there is a slight thickening above an irregular and not quite continuous groove, part of which overlaps and so recalls that on the Bushmills vessel: this feature is not clear in Abercromby's fig. 33 (type B 1). The Wilsford beaker has the lip pinched up and everted, with an internal sloping ledge 11 mm. wide, a late feature.
Comparable in a lesser degree is the broad constriction round the body of the Tremadoc beaker, found in a cist in the parish of Dolbenmaen, Carnarvons., in 1929: the surface of this pot is covered with bands of simple impressions made with the thumb-nail (Davies, Ellis, Arch. Camb., 1931, pp. 363–4, fig.).Google Scholar
page 261 note 5 Cf. Abercromby, , B.A.P. i, pls. XLIII ff.Google Scholar
page 261 note 6 Simple patterns formed by finger-nail impressions are frequent on Windmill Hill ware (Piggott, Stuart, Arch. Journ. lxxxviii (1931), pp. 72, 80), but the use of dragged finger-nail ornament rusticating the greater part of the exterior of pots seems to have come into Britain with the introduction of Peterborough ware (op. cit., pp. 72, 117); hence, doubtless, its adoption on beakers, which are frequently found in association with that ceramic.Google Scholar
Mapping and analysis show that the distribution of dragged finger-nail decoration on British beakers is widespread and is not confined to any one type, but that it is more common in East Anglia and Wessex than elsewhere, is infrequent north of Yorkshire, and apparently does not occur on the western side of the Highland Zone in southern Britain. A number of examples are referred to in the text.
page 262 note 1 In the Black Gate Museum, Newcastle; Proc. Soc. Antiq. Newcastle, 4, iii (1927), pp. 19–20, pl.Google Scholar; Arch. Æl. 4, v (1928), p. 18, pl. VI, 1Google Scholar.
page 262 note 2 Greenwell Collection, no. 79, 12–19, 1896.
page 262 note 3 Mr. T. Wake has found that this beaker came from cist 2, on Lilburn Hill Farm, Northumberland: see Arch. Æl. 2, xiii, 351, fig., pl. XXII B.Google Scholar
page 262 note 4 Gordon-Williams, J. P., Arch. Camb., 1926, pp. 186–90, figs.; Cyril Fox, pp. 401–4, with photograph and sketch of pot as restored, in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.Google Scholar
page 262 note 5 Abercromby, op. cit., fig. 224; Gógan, L. S., Feis Maighe Tuireadh Handbook, 1929, ‘The Bell-Beakers of Magh Tuireadh and their Significance’;Google ScholarBremer, W., Proc. Royal Irish Academy, xxxviii (1928), C, pp. 27–9, fig. 2Google Scholar.
page 263 note 1 Reproduced by Abercromby, op. cit., fig. 223.
page 263 note 2 Davison, A. H., Orr, J., Stelfox, A. W., and Stendall, J. A. S., Irish Naturalists' Journal, i, no. 14 (11. 1927), pp. 280–4, pl. xv and sections, ‘Excavations of White Park Bay Kitchen Midden Site’. The finds are in the Municipal Museum, Belfast. While this paper was in the press Miss M. Gaffikin reported that she had recently found in the Whitepark Bay kitchen middens sherds with finger-nail decoration of the type used on the Bushmills beaker and others with notched ornament.Google Scholar
page 263 note 3 See above, p. 261, footnotes 1, 6.
page 263 note 4 Callander, J. G., P.S.A.S. lxiii (1928–1929), especially pp. 94–5; on figs. 57 and 41 finger-nail ornament occurs.Google Scholar
page 263 note 5 Op. cit., p. 95; Fairbairn, A., P.S.A.S. lxi (1927), pp. 269–89, map and figs.; xlviii, pp. 373–81; lx, pp. 151–2, fig. 6; lxii, pp. 5–6, II, fig. The Muirkirk finds are in the National Museum of Antiquities, EdinburghGoogle Scholar.
page 264 note 1 P.S.A.S. lxi, p. 274; liv, p. 211, not illustrated. It is noteworthy that the only instance of finger-nail markings on the Scottish beakers illustrated by Abercromby is on one of the sherds from a kitchen midden at North Berwick, East Lothian (op. cit., pp. 36, 38, 71, fig. 220).
page 264 note 2 Callander, J. G., P.S.A.S. lviii (1923–1924), pp. 24–7, fig. 1.Google Scholar
page 264 note 3 Piggott, S., Arch. Journ. lxxxviii (1931), ‘The Neolithic Pottery of the British Isles’, pp. 104, 85, map, fig. 4.Google Scholar
page 264 note 4 Abercromby, op. cit., pp. 35–43; Fox, Cyril, Personality of Britain (1932), fig. 2, map of distribution of beakers in the British IslesGoogle Scholar.
page 264 note 5 Bryce, T. H., P.S.A.S. xxxvi, 162–3, 171.Google Scholar
page 265 note 1 Op. cit., chapters ix and x.
page 265 note 2 Abercromby, op. cit., p. 117, figs. 231, 232: the bowl is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
page 265 note 3 Bryce, op. cit., pp. 90–1, fig. 13; section, fig. 9.
page 265 note 4 Dr. Graham Callander suggests, however, that the relative infrequency of beakers in the west of Scotland may be accounted for by the lack of habitable country on that coast. MissMitchell, Margaret (Antiquity, vi (1932), p. 91)Google Scholar sees in the distribution of beakers of type B on the west coast of Scotland evidence for a sea-borne invasion from the south-west.
page 265 note 5 Bryce, T. H., P.S.A.S. xxxviii (1903–1904), pp. 37–51, 79Google Scholar, figs.; Callander, ibid., lxiii, pp. 31, 49–50, 94, map, fig. 60.
page 265 note 6 e.g. the distribution of stone axes, and of objects of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages; Fox, Personality, map c, for Bronze Age evidence.
page 265 note 7 Fox, op. cit., pl. III, distribution of food-vessels.