Pots in pits:

Between 1988 and 1992 the British Museum undertook a major project looking at settlements from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Roman period in East Yorkshire, in an attempt to clarify the chronology, sources and spatial distributions of handmade pottery in use in the area. Pit groups within these settlements were targeted, with the aim of recovering useful groups of pottery, associated with datable metalwork or other groups of material which could be independently dated (e.g. through radiocarbon assay). This work was complemented with a large-scale programme of petrological work on prehistoric and Romano-British pottery from a large number of sites over the region. The volume sets out the results of the project's investigations on twelve sites, together with an unpublished excavation at Scarborough Castle which resulted in the recovery of inter alia a complete Bronze Age sword. The prehistoric finds from the 1927 excavations at the Castle are also re-evaluated and placed into their wider regional setting. In addition to the pottery, the monograph also publishes an extensive range of associated material -- everything from extensive industries of split-bone tool production, to one of the earliest prehistoric boat models known from Britain, and a unique Neolithic carved chalk plaque. There are also important mould fragments for casting a decorative horse harness disc which could be paralleled in the Stanwick hoard. Includes