![\"VM](\"http:\/\/www.thanetarch.co.uk\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/VM-201.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Today’s image is of a decorative motif on a piece of\u00a0 pottery from the transitional period between the Middle and later Bronze Age.<\/p>\n
The sherd from a vessel closely related to the one shown in Day 199, which contained the Birchington Bronze Hoard<\/a>. Close inspection of the globular bowl from Birchington shows that it was decorated with a horizontal row of stamped rings, following the centre line of the body.<\/p>\n The sherd shown in the VM_365\u00a0 image today is from another similar flint and grog tempered vessel, this time from Margate. The Margate pot is also likely to have been decorated with a single row of stamps from an object carved with a series of raised concentric circles. The stamping was added after the outer skin of the pot had been burnished to a smooth finish. On the current evidence – including the dating of the hoard from within the Birchington bowl the date of the vessel the sherd came from and other pots like this should be placed between c.1350-1150 BC.<\/p>\n Like much of the decoration applied to Bronze Age pottery, the ring pattern is thought to be skeuomorphic<\/a>,\u00a0 each of the stamped rings emulating the rivets that would have joined two sections of a bronze bowl into a globular shape.<\/p>\n A bronze cauldron\u00a0<\/a> that was found at Shipton on Cherwell in Oxfordshire which is now in the Ashmolean Museum, <\/a>gives an idea of the riveting patterns on bronze vessels that may have inspired the ring stamp motif on the pots from Birchington and Margate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s image is of a decorative motif on a piece of\u00a0 pottery from the transitional period between the Middle and later Bronze Age. The sherd from a vessel closely related to the one shown in Day 199, which contained the Birchington Bronze Hoard. Close inspection of the globular bowl from Birchington shows that it was … Continue reading VM_365 Day 201 Memories of metal on ring stamped Bronze Age pottery from Margate<\/span>
![bronze cauldron\u00a0<\/a> that was found at Shipton on Cherwell in Oxfordshire](\"http:\/\/britisharchaeology.ashmus.ox.ac.uk\/images\/highlights\/AN1928-324-large.jpg\"){kind=link}