Description

Summary: 1 miniature cup (incense cup?) with very thick rim and hollowed out base, decorated with twisted cord impressions across the rim, found with a primary cremation in the bowl barrow, Amesbury G19, excavated by William Cunnington.

Research results

Jones (2012) discusses Early Bronze Age miniature vessels as part of an exploration of how scale impacts our experiences of materiality. He argues that models are a representation of the essence of the objects that they miniaturise; the wessex miniature vessels are part of a wider suite of miniature objects and exotic grave goods that Jones argues represents a pattern of cosmological acquisition, which through their materials and form embody distant connections through the demonstration of specialised knowledge. He also suggests that the vessels are often relatively poorly made and may have been made specifically for inclusion in the graves.

One of two miniature vessels, possibly incence cups, found with a primary cremation, buried in a cist under round barrow Amesbury G19, excavated by William Cunnington. The grave contained a pair of 'drinking vessels' and two copper alloy awls. Enigmatic miniature vessels are known from a number of Early Bronze Age graves in the Wessex region, dating to 2000-1500 BC. This vessel was decorated on wet clay, suggesting it was not particularly well made.

This vessel was re-examined by Copper (2017) as part of their Mphil with the University of Bradford, which covered all of the Early Bronze Age miniature vessels in Southern Britain. They divide the corpus into four groups: miniature, bi-conical, simple, and elaborate, and argue that most are derivations of late beaker and early food vessel imitations. Investigating the contexts of these vessels, they found that most were associated with primary cremations in round barrows, with no clear correlation with either age or sex – although noting that there was only limited evidence for the latter.