Beaker. Normanton Down. (l) 'Grape' Cup'. Normanton Down. (r)
The fictile vessels are all of a very primitive nature, being entirely moulded by hand, and showing no trace of the use of the potter's wheel. The body consists of a mixture of clay mixed with fine pebbles, or pounded flint, and sometimes ground chalk or shells. For finer work sharp sand has been employed. The firing is most primitive and imperfect. After drying in the sun the vessel was probably baked in the ashes of a fire of brushwood piled over and about it. The decoration, like the other processes, bespeaks a simple culture. It is usually in the nature of lines, or dots, varied now and then by thumb marks, many exhibit the impress of the thumbnail. A pointed stick would produce lines on the soft body of the vessel, so would a twisted cord, while a rude comb of points inserted in a stick, gave a fine dotted line. Circles, animal forms, or arabesques do not appear at all.
Unique variety of 'Incense cup'. Normanton Down.
The Cinerary Urns and Incense Cups were strictly sepulchral; the Food Vessels and Drinking Cups seem also to have been reserved for funeral rites, as they are not found apart from the Barrows, and placed beside the dead ceremonially, to contain provision for the Spirit in its voyage to the distant land to which it had departed. Both Food Vessels and Drinking Cups are rare in Wiltshire. Two were presented to the Salisbury Museum in 1915, both of which came from Hampshire. A similar vessel was found at Bulford in 1910, and is in the same collection.
The "finds" in the Round Barrows are not, however, confined to pottery. Weapons, some of stone, some of bronze, and occasional ornaments of gold and amber shed further light upon this departed race of Salisbury Plain. Although this people has been referred to as a "Bronze Age" people, it does not follow that their weapons were made exclusively of that material. In all ages there is a perceptible overlap from the former culture. In much later days the bow and arrow lingered on long after the introduction of fire-arms; so, too, in these early times, the stone implement was used side by side with the more recent metal one. Axes both perforated and unperforated have been found, but it is distinctly significant of an advancing culture, that the perforated axes outnumber the older form. Several of these stone hammer-axes have been found associated with bronze daggers and celts, showing that the use of stone and bronze was contemporaneous.
Flint dagger. Stonehenge Dn.