This complete ceramic vessel is an interesting and remarkable find for several reasons.

It was uncovered intact and sitting upright next to the skeletal remains of a child that had been buried in the centre of one of the barrows on this site. The vessel appears to have been placed empty and with care by the side of the child. The shape of the pot is termed a ‘food vessel’ although this does not imply that it was used for holding food.

The vessel has a single handle and a carination, or shoulder. On the exterior, the impressed decoration of short notches has been carefully distributed in horizontal lines, and the interior bears a concentric line of notches encircled by double lines. The interior has a black residue stronger near the base, which suggests it was used prior to being placed in the burial.

This type of vessel dates to the Early Bronze Age and its closest parallels are with vessels produced in north-east England, especially around Yorkshire and Northumberland, where the best documented examples have mostly been recovered from graves.

Food vessels in general are very rare finds in the south-west and in southern England, and those with more elaborate decoration (of Yorkshire type) and handles are rarer still. Their distribution seems to indicate the existence of complex networks and relations across the country during the Early Bronze Age, with some indication that social identify could be articulated using burial goods such as this.

In its Wiltshire setting, this pot must either have been made some 400km away and transported, or a pottery with the skills and knowledge of a non-local style must have made it locally, perhaps to be deliberately different in its appearance. As a grave good for a child, this pot could have signaled the wealth or status of the family of the deceased, as well as possibly their ‘northern’ associations.