4.7.1 Main coarse wares

The main coarse wares, taken as the fabric groups CASH, DWSH and GREY, represent 76-78% of the pottery, excluding the local production ‘waste' and the coarse OXSH fragments. The interaction between these technically different fabrics is difficult to examine in detail, and the occurrence by form is shown on Table 12.

The difficulties of assessment lie partly in the practicalities of recording, and in the character of the fabric groups. All sherds giving evidence of being from open forms are recorded as such, and it can be assumed that the bulk of the untyped CASH sherds, representing 41% of all CASH, probably came from jars. Similarly, the body sherds of DWSH have all been assigned to jars. But with GREY untyped body sherds (70% of all), the type of form cannot be assigned since body sherds of jars, flagons, wide-mouth bowls or other less common forms cannot be differentiated. If the untyped sherds are disregarded and attention focused on the interaction between GREY and CASH, the main shared forms can be compared, Fig.56.

Fig.56: Main forms, GREY and CASH fabric groups (sherd and weight percentages)

The number of dishes in CASH fabrics relative to those in GREY wares is of interest, and the paucity of identified bowls suggests that most of the sherds recorded as bowls or dishes were from dishes. The number of lids in CASH fabrics indicate their main use in cooking. Given the difficulties of the quantity of untyped GREY body sherds, it is probable that shell and calcite-gritted fabrics accounted for some 75% of the jars, and thus provided the main cooking vessels. Not all of the GREY jars give evidence of having been used for cooking, and a number may have been used more for storage, alongside the narrow-necked jars, storage and handled jars.

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Last updated: Tue Nov 28 2000