Bronze Age sepulchral pottery, which is hand-made, often imperfectly baked and unglazed, has been divided into four classes: the beaker or drinking vessel, the food vessel, the incense cup, and the cinerary urn. The two former are usually associated with inhumations; the two latter with cremations.
As a type of prehistoric ceramic art in Britain, the Hon. J. Abercromby says that the beaker is the earliest, and the cinerary urn the latest.[7]
Plate II., fig. 2, is a typical drinking vessel or beaker which was found in the hands of a skeleton during alterations to the Masonic Hall at Dorchester. It is made of thin, reddish, well-baked pottery, and from the stains inside it evidently contained food or liquid at some time. The beaker is more often met with than the food vessel, being found on the Continent as well as in England. The food vessel, on the other hand, is a type unrepresented outside the British Isles, and is entirely wanting in Wiltshire,[8] although common in the North of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In the Dorset County Museum at Dorchester there are several fine examples found in the county, and Plate I., fig. 1, represents one taken from a barrow near Martinstown.[9] It is of unusual interest, as one-handled food-vessels are rare. In this inhumed primary interment the vessel was lying in the arms of the skeleton, whilst close by was another and much smaller vessel, with the remains of three infants.
The terms “drinking-vessel” and “food-vessel” may possibly be accurate, as these vessels may have held liquids or food; but there is no evidence to show that the so-called “incense cups” had anything to do with incense. The more feasible idea seems to be that they were used to hold embers with which to fire the funeral pile, and the holes with which they are generally perforated would have been most useful for admitting air to keep the embers alight.[10] These small vessels are usually very much ornamented, even on their bases, with horizontal lines, zigzags, chevrons, and the like, and occasionally a grape-like pattern. They are seldom more than three inches in height, but vary much in shape, and often are found broken, with the fragments widely separated, as if they had been smashed purposely at the time of the burial. Plate II., figs. 3 and 4, are from specimens in the Dorset County Museum, which also contains several other Dorset examples.
There can be no doubt as to the use of the cinerary urn, which always either contains or covers cremated remains. The urn (Plate II., fig. 1) is from the celebrated Deverel Barrow, which was opened in 1825 by Mr. W. A. Miles. The shape of this urn is particularly common in Dorset, as well as another variety which has handles, or, rather, perforated projections or knobs. A third and prettier variety is also met with, having a small base, and a thick overhanging rim or band at the mouth, generally ornamented.
It is rare to find curved lines in the ornamentation of Bronze Age pottery, but sometimes concentric circles and spiral ornaments are met with on rock-surfaces and sculptured stones. Mr. Charles Warne found in tumulus 12, Came Down, Dorchester, two flat stones covering two cairns with incised concentric circles cut on their surfaces.[11]
There is no clear evidence of iron having been found in the round barrows of Dorset in connection with a Bronze Age interment; but of gold several examples may be seen in the County Museum, and one, which was found in Clandon Barrow, near Martinstown, with a jet head of a sceptre with gold studs, is shown in Plate I., fig 2. Others were discovered in Mayo’s Barrow and Culliford Tree.[12] Bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin, is the only other metal found with primary interments in our Dorset round barrows.
The County Museum possesses some excellent celts and palstaves; a set of six socketed celts came from a barrow near Agger-Dun, and look as if they had just come from the mould. They are ornamented with slender ridges, ending in tiny knobs, and have never been sharpened (two of them are figured in Plate I., figs. 3 and 4); another celt, from a barrow in the Ridgeway, is interesting as having a fragment of cloth adhering to it. Daggers are found, generally, with cremated remains, and are usually ornamented with a line or lines, which, beginning just below the point, run down the blade parallel with the cutting edges. The rivets which fastened the blade to the handle are often in position with fragments of the original wooden handle and sheath.[13] These daggers seem to be more common in Dorset than in the northern counties, and many examples may be seen in the County Museum, and two are illustrated in Plate I., figs. 5 and 6.
Bronze pins, glass beads, amber and Kimmeridge shell objects, bone tweezers and pins, slingstones and whetstones, are occasionally met with; but by far the most common objects are the flint and stone implements, weapons, and flakes.
In making a trench through a barrow near Martinstown,[14] more than 1,200 flakes or chips of flints were found, besides some beautifully-formed scrapers, a fabricator, a flint saw, most skilfully notched, and a borer with a gimlet-like point.