Handles are occasionally found not only on drinking-cups, but also on the other kinds of sepulchral pottery.
[817] Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 378-83; W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 83-93; J. R. Mortimer, Forty Years’ Researches, pp. lxii-lxv.
[818] Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 343-57; xlix, 1885, p. 195; W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 66-74; J. R. Mortimer, Forty Years’ Researches, pp. lviii-lix; Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxix, 1905, pp. 415-6.
[819] W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 74-83; Archaeol. Journal, xxiv, 1867, pp. 22-5; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 357-77; J. R. Mortimer, Forty Years’ Researches, pp. lix-lxii.
[820] W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, p. 61; Archaeol. Cambr., 6th ser., ii, 1902, p. 197. The counties in which drinking-cups have been found are Kent, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Buckingham, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire, Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, Derby, Stafford, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Westmorland, Cumberland, Monmouth, Anglesey, Carnarvon, Denbigh, Glamorgan, Berwick, Roxburgh, Ayr, Argyll, Stirling, Lanark, Haddington, Edinburgh, Linlithgow, Kinross, Fife, Forfar, Perth, Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin, Nairn, Inverness, Ross, Sutherland, and the island of Mull (Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxii, 1902, p. 386 and map facing p. 396; Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxviii, 1904, p. 329). Their rarity in South-Eastern Britain is doubtless due largely to the destruction of barrows in a highly cultivated region; while their absence from many of the Midland counties may be ascribed partly to the same cause and partly to the fact that the population of those parts in the Bronze Age was probably small. In Cornwall vessels of a peculiar kind appear to have served the same purposes as drinking-cups and food-vessels (Archaeologia, xlix, 1885, pp. 186-8). From the frequency with which drinking-cups occur in the east of Scotland it may perhaps be inferred that they were introduced into that country, at least in part, by immigrants from Scandinavia or Denmark.
A gold cup, which in form resembles certain drinking-cups and is ornamented on the bottom with concentric circles, has been found with a bronze dagger at Rillaton in Cornwall (Archaeol. Journal, xxiv, 1867, p. 189).
[821] See pp. 408-9, 442-3, infra.
[822] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxii, 1902, pp. 376-85.
[823] Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxviii, 1904, pp. 346-7; W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, p. 94.
[824] Ib., pp. 93-4, 101; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, p. 386; lii, 1890, pp. 24-5. Cf. J. Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times,—the Bronze and Stone Ages, p. 76, and E. B. Tylor, Prim. Culture, ii, 1903, pp. 30-43. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (Forty Years’ Researches, pp. lxvi-lxvii) says, ‘If food was essential [to the dead], so would liquid be ... and I do not know of an instance of the remains of animal matter having ever been found in any vase of the true drinking-cup type. That they served the purpose of holding liquid, there can be little doubt’. Mr. Mortimer is more logical than the people of the Bronze Age. His argument would lead to the conclusion that only food or only drink was considered necessary for the dead according as food-vessels or drinking-cups were placed with them. Very likely liquid was sometimes poured into drinking-cups: but for obvious reasons evidence is wanting; whereas evidence exists that they sometimes held food. By ‘the true drinking-cup type’ Mr. Mortimer apparently means the low-brimmed type which Thurnam called γ (see W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, p. 95, fig. 82), and which, as we have seen, is confined to Northern Britain; but he is alone in calling this type ‘true’ to the exclusion of the others.