talking points A HISTORY
of the
WEST in
100
objects 15: THE HEMBURY BOWL
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Found in east Devon, made of Cornish clay in about 3500 BC
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Julien Parsons is the Senior Collections Officer, The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. He says: This elegant bowl was reconstructed from fragments found at the neolithic site of Hembury near Honiton. At over 5,500 years old, it is among the earliest ceramic vessels surviving from southern Britain. Archaeologists can appear obsessive when it comes to their pottery. You can’t blame them – on many prehistoric sites the leather, wood, cloth and basketry that was the stuff of life has long since decayed, leaving only flint, bone and pottery. They need to make the best of what survives. In the late 1960s microscopic
analysis of mineral particles in the Hembury pottery revealed the presence of a rock called gabbro. This proved the clay did not come from Devon but from the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. So either the clay or the finished bowls were transported over 130 miles from St Keverne to a hilltop near Honiton. But why go to the bother of importing pottery from so far away? Surely other clay was available locally? We need to reconsider the find spot. Hembury was a causewayed enclosure – a special type of prehistoric earthwork which seems to have been reserved for seasonal gatherings, ceremonies or ritual activity. I imagine the origin of the clay was crucial - not just to pedantic archaeologists but to the people who used the Hembury bowl.
#15 This bowl is 5,500 years old
On display in Gallery 3, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter Competition winner: Congratulations to Mrs Elizabeth Hutchings of Kingsbridge who wins a luxury trip for two to Exeter Races, with thanks to Exeter Racecourse (www.exeter.thejockeyclub.co.uk)
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