Talk:British Neolithic pottery

Notes on sources

Having started this article a couple of days ago, I'm finding that it's hard to get the sources to agree on terminology. Here are some notes on what the different sources say, so I can try to reconcile them before this goes into the article. This is just the earlier Neolithic styles. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Sources

• Pouncett (2008) "The Neolithic Period" in Handbook of British Archaeology.
  • Uses "Grimston-Lyles Hill" rather than "Carinated Bowl". Dated only as "the fourth millennium BC". Gives Hembury ware, Windmill Hill ware, Towthorpe ware, and Boghead Bowls as regional variations, implying similar dates?
  • "towards the end of the fourth millennium BC": emergence of Southern Decorated Bowl. Lists Abingdon ware, Mildenhall Ware, and Whitehawk Ware all as regional and "associated with this tradition".
  • Ebbsfleet style Peterborough ware (PW) "was considered to be a direct development of the Southern Decorated Bowl tradition";' then decoration becomes more common and in the third millennium we get Mortlake Style PW and then Fengate style PW. The Fengate style collars develop into Bronze Age collared urns. The Ebbsfleet-Mortlake-Fengate progression "only applies to southeast Britain".
  • Impressed ware: later Neolithic. PW is now considered one of Impressed Ware's regional variants; others are Rudston, Ford, Meldon Bridge, Rothesay, Beacharra, multi-carinated, and Unstan.
  • Grooved ware: used to be known as Rinyo-Clacton. Northern Britain. Emerges at the same time as Impressed Ware. Variants include Clacton, Durrington Walls, Woodland, Rinyo.
• Gibson (2002) Prehistoric Pottery in Britain & Ireland.
  • Earliest is Carinated Bowl. "Formerly called Grimston-Lyles Hill Ware". (Points out that LBK did not cross the channel.)
  • Around 3600 BC we get Hembury Wares -- southwest Britain, gabbroic clay from the Lizard
  • Other styles in southern Britain "enter the archaeological record at about this time"..."often seen as representing regional styles, particularly Southeastern, Southwestern and Southern" but "the validity of these groupings is being questioned as more pottery comes to light". Adds that pleas to abandon regional labels have been "largely unheard".
  • "Contemporary with these " -- also says "second, post-inception", so he appears to be referring to the 3600 BC date -- he lists Abingdon Ware, Mildenhall, and Whitehawk. Adds "these regional groups do not appear to be as clear cut as was previously believed" and suggests Southern Decorated Bowl citing Whittle (1977), though he adds also that this name ignores the plain wares found in these groups.
  • In Ireland similar pot sequences exist; mentions Goodland bowls and Drimnagh or Ballyalton bowls as datable to about 3500-3300 BC. Also at this time Carrowkeel Ware, Murlough Bowls.
  • In Scotland Boghead bowls are contemporary. Unique forms are Unstan Bowls and the multi-carinated Hebridean bowls.
  • Impressed Ware dated to "shortly before 3300 BC". "..or Peterborough Ware" so he doesn't give it as just a regional variant as Pouncett does, but see below. Fully developed by 3000 BC, out of vogue by mid 3rd millennium.
  • Cites Isobel Smith's doctoral thesis from c. 1956 as organizing PW. She had Ebbsfleet ware as the earliest, then Mortlake, then Fengate. Cites Cleal (1995) for the links between PW and earlier carinated styles (flint inclusions) but then gives examples of dates for Fengate and Mortlake after Gibson and Kinnes 1997 examination of the data; it appears all three styles may have been simultaneous; all were in use by 3000. See p. 80 for details.
  • Impressed ware -- now clearer that PW is just a member of this class. Lists Meldon Bridge as example from the north. PW not a term ever used for Ireland.
  • Ireland -- lists Sandhills Ware, Dundrum Bowls, Goodland Bowls as part of the Impressed Ware tradition.
  • Grooved ware -- identified by Stuart Piggott (see p. 86.) who suggested "Rinyo-Clacton Ware" in 1954. Both terms in use since. Dates vary across Britain.
  • Four styles of Grooved ware (Wainwright & Longworth 1971):Clacton, Woodlands, Durrington Walls, Rinyo.
• Malone (2001) Neolithic Britain and Ireland
  • Earliest widespread style is Grimston-Lyles Hill. Replaced from c. 3750 BC by (all regional) Windmill Hill (inc. Abingdon), Hembury, Whitehawk, Mildenhall, Broome Heath, Grimston, Heslerton, Towthorpe. Aspects of Grimston style persist for 1000 years.
  • Windmill Hill styles"form the pottery of the middle early Neolithic in the south-west of England (c.3700-2900 BC)".
  • See maps pp. 234-5
  • Irish early Neolithic is Carinated Bowl "which seems to be ancestral to Grimston-Lyles". After around 3500 BC Limerick, and Lyles Hill styles. c. 3500-2900 in Ireland include Goodlands, Sandhills, Dundrum, Murlough, and Carrowkeel.
  • Peterborough Ware is the "now generic term for several regional and chronological developments"; from 3200 BC, southern and eastern Britain.
  • Ebbsfleet (PW); Mortlake (PW) "probably develops from Ebbsfleet", and Fengate "seems to follow a logical evolution from Mortlake". Acknowledges the dating issues discussed by Gibson but proposes the evolution anyway.
  • Fengate anticipates Bronze Age collared urns
  • Northern PW includes Rudston, Meldon Bridge, Ford.
  • Later Scottish styles include Glenluce, Rothesay, Beacharra, Unstan, Hebridean bowl
  • Grooved ware developed in Scotland early 3rd millennium, appears in south "perhaps around 2500-2300 BC". Styles include Clacton, Durrington (or Woodhenge), Woodlands, Rinyo.
  • Irish later Neolithic: Ballyalton. "a stylistic development towards Grooved Ware". Grooved Ware appears in the early 3rd millennium.
• Gibson & Woods (1997) Prehistoric Pottery for the Archaeologist From the chronological overview:
  • Earliest dated ceramics are Grimston Lyles Hill series. Reaches Britain around 4000 BC; lasts "perhaps as late as 3000 BC" (adds caveats to that date).
  • Regional variations include Heslerton, Towthorpe, Boghead, Hembury
  • Windmill Hill ware -- once thought to be generally southern England, now a regional style.
  • Towards end of Windmill Hill we see emergence of southern decorated bowl tradition. Abingdon, Mildenhall, Whitehawk all other regional styles; not explicit but seem to be contemporary with Windmill Hill.
  • "Later Neolithic impressed wares", once known as Peterborough ware (1910); corpus has grown since then and PW is now just a regional variant of impressed ware.
  • "The traditional Ebbsfleet-Mortlake-Fengate progression can now be seen to be relevant only to the south-east of England and to have limited chronological significance; it is a purely stylistic development".
  • Ebbsfleet is a directed development from southern decorated styles of early 3rd millennium.
  • Impressed ware other regional styles include Rudston, Ford, Meldon Bridge
  • late 3rd millennium in Scotland includes Rothesay, Beacharra, Hebridean bowl, Unstan.
• Gibson & Woods (1997): glossary definitions
  • Abingdon - style in the southern decorated bowl tradition. Gives type-site dates of 3110 +/- 130 BC to 2500 +/- 145 BC, presumably calibrated.
  • Ballyalton - not listed
  • Beacharra - no dates, "round-based"
  • Boghead - "round-based bowls with carinations in the western neolithic tradition", "regional relative of Grimston-Lyles Hill". C14 dates 3000-2900 at type site.
  • Carinated Bowl - not listed.
  • Carrowkeel Ware - not listed
  • Clacton - "sub-style of Grooved Ware".
  • Dundrum - not listed
  • Durrington Walls - "sub-style of Grooved Ware".
  • Ebbsfleet - stylistically earliest style of PW in the later neolithic impressed ware tradition
  • Fengate - final stylistic component of PW
  • Ford - regional style of later neolithic impressed ware
  • Glenluce - not listed
  • Goodlands - not listed
  • Grimston Lyles Hill - "insular variant of a wider western European style", earliest in Britain, one of the longest-lived. Appears c. 4000 BC. Regional variations include Heslerton, Towthorpe, Hembury, Boghead.
  • Grooved Ware -- was renamed Rinyo-Clacton but then changed back. Smith identified three styles: Clacton, Woodlands, Woodhenge (1956). Reassessed in 1971 with a larger corpus by Wainwright & Longworth: four styles: Clacton, Woodlands, Durrington Walls, Rinyo.
  • Hebridean bowl - later 3rd millenium
  • Hembury - round-based, related to western neolithic tradition and Grimston-Lyles Hill, dates to 3rd millennium
  • Heslerton - local variant of Grimston-Lyles Hill originally, but now thought to be just poorly made carinated bowls.
  • Impressed Ware -- listed as "Impressed decoration" which only talks about the decoration itself.
  • later Neolithic impressed ware - generic term given to a large variety of ceramics dating to late 3rd and early 2nd
  • Meldon Bridge - local style of later neolithic impressed ware.
  • Mildenhall - regional style of southern neolithic decorated bowl
  • Mortlake - 2nd stage in Ebbsfleet-Mortlake-Fengate, per Smith (1956)
  • Murlough Bowls - not listed
  • Peterborough ware - used to mean later neolithic impressed ware but now is a regional term for southern and eastern. Gives Smith's 3-way division into Ebbsfleet-Mortlake-Fengate. Chronology uncertain but gives support for sequence, at least stylistically.
  • Plain Bowl - not listed
  • Rinyo - northern sub-style of grooved ware
  • Rinyo-Clacton - antiquated term for grooved ware
  • Rothesay - 3rd millennium regional baggy pots
  • Rudston - style of later neolithic impressed ware, regional
  • Sandhills - not listed
  • Southern Decorated Bowl - generic term; styles include Abingdon, Mildenhall, Whitehawk, Windmill Hill
  • Towthorpe - Yorkshire variant of Grimston-Lyles Hill of 4th and 3rd millennia
  • Unstan - roundbased, 3rd and 2nd millennia, regional
  • western neolithic - generic name for round based 4th/3rd millennia bowls with parallels to continental styles inc. Hazendonk, Wijchen, Michelsberg. Lists Hembury, Windmill Hill, Grimston-Lyles Hill, Heslerton, Boghead.
  • Whitehawk - regional variant of southern decorated bowl tradition.
  • Windmill Hill - regional variant of western neolithic tradition.
  • Woodhenge - former substyle of grooved ware.
  • Woodlands - substyle of grooved ware
• Barclay et al. (2018) Dating the earliest Neolithic ceramics of Wessex
  • Analysis based on Wessex but the models are given for southern England
  • Carinated Bowl - Bayesian C14 graph given, starts 4245-3975 BC @ 95%, ends 3625-3395 BC @ 95%
  • Decorated Bowl - model starts 3740-3655 BC @ 95%, ends 3340-3260 BC @ 95%
  • South-Western @95% 3890-3805 to 3465-3285 BC
  • Sequence suggested as follows, based on Wessex and the region around it:
    • By 40th and certainly by 39th century classic Carinated Bowl in use in Thames Valley and Wessex.
    • Nothing can be shown to be definitely before Sweet Track (3807/6 BC)
    • 38th century sees non-carinated forms appear -- note on terminology;developed/non-classic Carinated Bowl or Plain Bowl
    • Coneybury Anomaly is 38th century
    • Fussell's Lodge shows unambiguous decorated pottery in 37th century
    • Use of carination decreases over time
• Whittle, Healy & Bayliss (2011) Gathering Time
  • Gives Carinated Bowl, Plain Bowl, and Decorated Bowl as the three early Neolithic types.
  • Sequence in that order is close to 100% certain. See p. 771 for details.
• Woodward & Hill (2002) Prehistoric Britain: The Ceramic Basis
• Gibson & Leivers (2008) "Neolithic pottery" in Allen et al. Neolithic Causewayed Enclosures
  • "general currency for Mildenhall ceramics between 3800 and 3200 cal BC, thus placing it between the Carinated Bowls of the primary Neolithic and Middle Neolithic Impressed Wares, if overlapping slightly with both"
• Leivers, Matt, R. Every, and L. Mepham. (2008) "Prehistoric pottery." From hunter gatherers to huntsmen–a history of the Stansted landscape
  • "The classification of Early Neolithic pottery in Britain remains confused. The continued use of contradictory type-names for perceived local variations with uncertain cultural and chronological significance has largely obscured understandings of how different ceramic traditions may have arisen and been used (Table 17.3). The most recent nomenclature in Table 17.3 allows for three overlapping pottery assemblages in the Early Neolithic of southern Britain: the Eastern, South-western and Decorated styles. This characterisation is quite misleading, and there is more likely to have been a background of plain bowl pottery of various kinds across the country, to which decoration is eventually added. Many assemblages contain both plain and decorated vessels, and decoration appears to have been used preferentially on particular vessel forms - principally heavy-rimmed shouldered bowls."
  • The table 17.3 Leivers refers to shows a sequence of seven typologies: Kendrick/Menghin 1925, Leeds 1927, Piggott 1932, Piggott 1954, Smith 1956, Smith 1974, Whittle 1977. He gives a list of type names for each but doesn't explain much. This would be a useful reference if we have a "history of typologies" section in this article, since it would validate the choice of those references.
• Ray et al. (2020) Neolithic Britain: The Transformation of Social Worlds
  • "Over time, the fine carinated bowl pottery of the earliest Neolithic occurred within more varied" assemblages.
  • Developed carinated bowl at the end is thicker and coarser
  • Shows a carinated and a plain bowl "distinct but chronologically overlapping"
• Peterson (2015) "The Origins of Pottery in Britain and Ireland" in Fowler et al Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe
  • "First Neolithic": Cites Smith (1974) and Herne (1988) for "open carinated bowl" as the earliest. Debate over how exact this is but early pottery still seems to be in one of a small range of forms.
  • "Early Neolithic": early but not the very first phase. Less open carinated, more complex rims, consensus that there is a chronological division between first and early Neolithic. Cleal splits early in two for England.
  • "Middle": Impressed ware, Ebbsfleet/Mortlake/Fengate, PW, Hebridean, Unstan, Collared bowls.
  • "Late": Grooved ware. Dates 2900-2100 BC. Origins in northern Scotland.

Notes

The main confusion in the above is the earliest material -- Grimston-Lyles Hill, Carinated, Plain, and the regional styles of the fourth millennium BC.

Sequence of five types from Pouncett:

1. Grimston-Lyles Hill - includes Carinated Bowl and I think Plain Bowl
2. Southern Decorated Bowl
3. Impressed Ware
4. Grooved Ware
5. Beaker

Looking at Pouncett I think this is the best framework to use. It's relatively recent (2008) and unambiguously laid out. It more or less explicitly includes Carinated Bowl. It does not include Plain Bowl so we will need to use another source to subdivide G-LH into Carinated Bowl and Plain Bowl; if I can find a good source for that then this becomes a sequence of six. The problem with that is going to be that Pouncett post-dates most of the other sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:57, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a detailed discussion in Gathering Time pp. 756-781. This gives plenty of support to the separation of Plain Bowl and gives detailed dating analysis. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)