Notes on the Beaker Pottery of the Ipswich Museum

Extract

There are in Ipswich Museum some 18 beakers, more or less complete, together with fragments of at least four more. As these pots are all from a restricted area of south-east Suffolk, and have, with one exception, never before been described, I have undertaken, with the consent and help of the Secretary, to make a few observations upon them. With tine exception of a group from Brantham, and a single example from Wherstead, all the beakers were recovered loose ın gravel digging or cliff-falls. Near Brantham Hall, near the point where the Stour broadens out into its estuary, three beakers were found by Mr. G. Maynard together in the grave of a woman buried with a child; the pots were discovered near the flexed shin bones of the woman. Just south of this grave, was found another one containing a single beaker. Near these graves, which were discovered in gravel-digging, was a disc barrow, from the central part of which Mr. Maynard recovered 16 fragments of a single beaker, while from the trench, the late Mr. E. T. Lingwood succeeded in obtaining a fragment of a second beaker. Of the group from the woman's grave (Figs. 3, 4, 5, Pl. XXVIII.), Fig 3 has a smooth outline with an everted lip, is decorated over its whole area by seventeen horizontal lines coarsely incised, and has a maximum height of 4.9 inches; Fig. 4 is a crudely formed pot standing no more than 3½ inches high, poorly decorated with faint finger-nail impressions; Fig. 5, standing 6 inches high, is of fine paste with the smooth outline typical of Abercromby's type B, decorated with horizontal lines and linear chevrons arranged over the whole surface.