The later prehistoric pottery collections register and bibliography for England: a gazetteer

A new survey, initiated by the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group and undertaken by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton, was begun in January 1996 to create a gazetteer of later prehistoric pottery collections.

This gazetteer consists of:

a register of all collections currently believed to exist;
a bibliography of the published collections.

The period under study spans the Late Bronze Age to Late Iron Age. The primary aim of the project is to determine how many later prehistoric pottery collections exist in England but its potential will be to assess and evaluate the nature of this national resource. The number of later prehistoric collections predicted to exist is about 4,000; in Essex alone there are over 400 collections dated to this period.

The register is a database composed of the name of the collection, grid reference, county, parish, sites and monuments record and Scheduled Ancient Monument numbers, type of site, current and future curatorial location, method of recovery, approximate size of collection, date range of the pottery, and details of publication. In addition, if a collection has been published then the full publication references will be included for the creation of the bibliography along with any of the following fields of inquiry: actual number and total weight of later prehistoric pottery sherds, and condition of the collection, as well as the presence of any other periods of pottery at the site, other ceramic artefacts of later prehistoric date, and non-ceramic artefacts. Details about the site itself which are to be recorded if possible from the publication include presence of deep stratification, number of pits, types of structures, accessibility of context details about the later prehistoric pottery, and any record of scientific investigations associated with the pottery such as radiocarbon dating, petrological analysis or residue analysis. A final field on the recording form allows for any information about the curation of the site archive.

Completion is due by April 1997, and the database will be available through a variety of media soon after. It will be housed in Southampton, and the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group will organise regular county by county updates.