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Stonehenge Cursus excavations 2006 – discovery of Neolithic pottery by Dennis Price, March 27, 2007
The interim report on the 2006 excavations by the Stonehenge Riverside Project is available under Media Links on the right of this page. It’s well worth reading as it contains some intriguing detail about the summer excavations and also some superb photographs that manage to convey the sheer scale of the earthworks known to us as Durrington Walls.
The report contains accounts of the discovery of prehistoric houses and the Avenue leading to the River Avon, but there are also some disappointments in its pages, as it appears that none of the various stones so far recovered by the test pit programme at the western end of the Cursus are bluestone originating from South Wales.
Nonetheless, as the photos above and below show, some Neolithic pottery, which I understand was decorated Peterborough Ware, was recovered by the archaeologists working near the Cursus. These few crumbling sherds may seem unimpressive when compared to stunning features such as the newly discovered Avenue at Durrington Walls, or when placed side by side with elegant yet lethal flint arrowheads, but I find them captivating nonetheless.
I didn’t personally dig up these pieces, but it was still a privilege to be able to hold some artefacts so closely connected with Stonehenge, shortly after they’d seen the light of day after having been buried for something like 4,500 years. The great William Blake alluded to this feeling far better than I ever could, when he wrote “To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.”
To make the original vessels, someone laboured long and hard at their craft to perfect the ability to produce these containers. Along the way there was doubtless heartbreak and some tears of sheer frustration, when the clay was incorrectly mixed, mixed to the wrong consistency or when the pots were fired at the wrong temperature, but they persisted.
While these containers had an obvious utilitarian value, their makers embellished them with various designs, using pieces of bone and plaited cord to make abstract impressions on the curved surfaces before the clay vessels were baked. It is a simple matter for us today to wander out to a local shop and buy a coffee mug or some dishes to replace some broken or chipped crockery, but it was not always thus.
More at
http://web.archive.org/web/20160618185550/http://eternalidol.com/?p=180
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