VESSEL

Pottery sherd from the shoulder of a globular jar with an everted rim, in the style of South West Decorated Ware, but made of local fabric with chalk and grog (crushed pot) inclusions (Roger Taylor pers comm). The fabric is dark grey in colour with larger grey inclusions of grog and smaller white flecks of chalk. The clay is grog-tempered rather than gabbroic (Henrietta Quinnell) so was not made in the Southwest but the style was certainly influenced by the local wares. The decoration of an incised plain leaf pattern using a pair of curvilinear lines, between two borders of two parallel lines that run horizontally around the neck and the girth of the vessel, is typical of South West Decorated jars found in the local region. The decorated exterior has also been burnished and the condition of the sherd is good in order to retain this.

An estimate of the diameter of the vessel from the curvature of the base of this sherd, where it would be widest, is about 200 mm and the internal neck diameter is about 140 mm.

A sherd (P26) with similar design of incised leaves and a similar internal neck diameter of 150 mm is illustrated in Quinnell, H, in Gossip, J forthcoming, Life outside the round: Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement at Higher Besore and Truro College, Threemilestone, Truro, (Cornish Archaeology) which was found outside the Iron Age roundhouse, House 3, in pit 2458, context 2549, reference GA.2 bb BD6.1, where residue was dated from c.200-40 BC.

The closest comparandum in the Royal Institution of Cornwall's collection is a jar (TRURI: 1956.64.14) with a similar plain-leaf or 'petal' pattern excavated from Caerloggas hillfort in St Mawgan-in-Pydar by Leslie Murray Threipland in 1948-1949, illustrated in Threipland (1956) on page 54, fig.14, no.1.

This vessel may have been made in Kent at an earlier date, however, as South West Decorated Ware can date from the 3rd century BC (Henrietta Quinnell pers comm). See notes below.