4th February 2013, 03:43 PM
Wax Wrote:The vessel they fitted over does not have to have been ceramic. Whats the possibility of them fitting over a metal vessel or even wood? There might be advantages to heavy lids and I have seen stone "pot lids" which were Victorian and used for ceramic vessels. But again the question of what they started out as still raises its head.Thanks Wax. I'm not sure the scorching on the thingies would fit with being used as lids for wooden vessels, unless the scorching happened during a different phase of use. Metal would be good but we have excellent iron & copper alloy preservation on both sites and no sign of anything that chunky bar a section of what looks to be a plank saw from one. The only metal finds on the other site are things like a spearhead and a knife blade - nothing which would indicate a vessel. However, secondary deposition is again a possibility.
The dimples increase the surface area if you were trying to control evaporation of a liquid, just a thought. Might work for melting something over a boiling liquid.
The evaporation idea is interesting but we were at a bit of a loss there as well. It's a lot finer than any briquetage I've seen and salt evaporation pans round here tend to be big beasts. I'd expect to see more than just one sherd per site if that was it. In order to melt something the objects must've originally had walls at least, so that points to a primary function. But again, no signs of more sherds in the respective assemblages. If there was a lot of mead being drunk in the Bronze Age as generally proposed, then it stands to reason that there's honey knocking around and ergo the beeswax by-product which could be processed by melting and used in its own right. Lipid analysis.... Hmm...
Nice ideas!