Summary

Intact, undecorated bipartite food vessel, from cist C, Holly Road, Leven, Fife

Accession Number

X.2005.27.8

Other references

Original description

[One of] Finds from excavations at Holly Road, Leven, Fife. ORF: IDENTIFICATION - Description: Finds from excavations at Holly Road, Leven, Fife. Description (after published catalogue entry by Sheridan): An intact, undecorated bipartite Vase Food Vessel, considerably coarser in appearance than X.2005.27.4 (X.EQ 1116) and the pots X.2005.27.6 (X.EQ 1118) and X.2005.27.7 (X.EQ 1119).The pot is of slightly friable fabric and there was damage to its rim and base-wall junction, some spalling of the interior surface and considerable cracking on the surface and through the wall. It appears markedly oval in shape when viewed from above and slightly lopsided when viewed from the side. The rim has a concave internal bevel. The slightly splaying neck is concave, the shoulder fairly sharp and the belly is of variable shape, forming a pedestal over part of the circumference and elsewhere narrowing evenly to the base. The base is concave on the exterior and flat on the interior. The exterior is a mottled red-brown, light brown and dark brown colour while the core is blackish-grey and the interior a variable light to dark grey-brown. The surfaces had been smoothed and slipped and there seems to have been some post-slipping smoothing on the outside of the neck, to judge from faint, horizontal striations. This surface treatment had obscured the stone temper although a few large fragments of angular, crushed stone are visible in fracture surfaces, the largest being 11.5mm across. More than one kind of stone is present. There is no indication of the pot’s former contents, if any had existed. Dimensions: height: 110mm; rim diameter: 174-184mm; base diameter: 92mm; wall thickness: 12-20mm. Context: Cist C: found upright against the N wall of the cist, towards its E end. Date: The surviving skeletal remains (see published report for details) produced a date of 3710-3350 cal BC (GrA-21728). FIELD COLLECTION - Place: Holly Road, Leven, Scoonie (Kirkcaldy), Fife. Grid Reference: NO 3783 0213. Site Type: Cist cemetery. Period: Bronze Age. Method: Excavation. NMRS no: NO30SE 1. Circumstances of Discovery / Notes: Excavations were undertaken in advance of the development of an area to the N of Leven where a cist burial was discovered in 1944. The recent investigations revealed an enclosed cist cemetery, radiocarbon-dated to the first two centuries of the second millennium BC. The cemetery appears to have had a short period of use when it received inhumation burials inside the ditched enclosure. A number of cists of poorer construction were uncovered outside the enclosure and a Neolithic cremation deposit was retrieved from within the ditch (Author’s abstract). In addition to the fusiform bead from the 1944 investigations (already registered as NMS: EQ 944), the cemetery produced the following: in Cist A were a flint knife, a fossil crinoid that had been used as a bead, and a Vase Food Vessel; in Cists B, C and K, one Vase Food Vessel each (with parts of two others being found in disturbed positions); and in Cist H, an unusually-shaped pebble that had probably been used as an amulet. NOTES and DOCUMENTATION - Bibliographic Reference: Christie, R L 'Short cist at Durie, Scoonie, Fife', Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 83 (1948-9), 230-1. Lewis, J and Terry, J ‘The excavation of an early Bronze Age cemetery at Holly Road, Leven, Fife’ Tayside & Fife Archaeological Journal 10 (2004). Registered / Completed By: Trevor Cowie. Date: 28.8.2006.

Associated person/people (e.g. excavator/former collection)

None

Discovery / field collection

Date of discovery

2002

Method (e.g. excavation)

Excavated

Place (i.e. location of discovery)

Leven, Fife, Scotland, Northern Europe

Grid reference

Not recorded

Acquisition

Acquisition date

2005

Acquisition source (i.e. name of donor)

Unknown

Acquisition source role (e.g. donor)

Donor

Image

None