A delightful recent find from one of our sites in East London! This is a late 19th century spittoon; these went out of fashion when tuberculous became rife in the 1910s.
We’ve had another exciting find from one of our evaluations this week!
This semi-complete urn, with decoration which commonly occurs on middle and middle-late Bronze Age pottery, and also (although less commonly) on post Deverel-Rimbury late Bronze Age pottery, contained a cremation along with these two copper-alloy objects.
One of these, a hollow hexagonal tube approximately 15mm long, appears to have been cast, and may be part of an implement such as a socketed axe or small socketed hammer. The second item, a flat, irregularly shaped piece of plate scrap, measures approximately 31mm across at the widest point and has a rectangular cross-section; this item was recovered from near the base of the vessel and will require further analysis for a more precise identification.
The association of the urn with an adjacent ring ditch is unlikely to be coincidental and the vessel may turn out to be one of a number of such deposits on the site in which other metalwork has been buried. We’ll keep you updated if this turns out to be the case!
