Storage Pot, Beckton Farm

Description A quarter of a large pot reconstructed from several sherds. The inner rim is decorated with two parallel grooves. The outside has a row of pierced dots towards the rim, with three less obvious parallel grooves below, and a series of short lines across most of the surface.   Excavations at Beckton uncovered groups of pits containing domestic refuse,including this pot rim. The pit from which it came appeared to be set at the foot of a palisade or fence of wooden stakes that divided the interior of an enclosure. Some of the other pits contained soft grey wood ash and fire blackened and splintered stones. On the south side of the enclosure there was an area of black greasy soil filled with carbonised wood and splintered stones.   Whilst people depended on hunting and food gathering for survival storage containers were made of light portable materials such as skin bags or baskets of vegetable fibres. Pottery emerge when people began to lead a more static existence and agricultural changes meant that large durable containers for storing grain were required. The craft of making pottery arrived with the families who crossed the North Sea and the Channel to settle here.   Neolithic potters built up their pots in spiral coils of clay. The surface was scraped smooth and sometimes burnished with a pebble before firing. Pots were usually round bottomed and their shapes and decorations were often reminiscent of their leather, wood or basketry predecessors. Until recently there was no evidence that these prople wore textiles. However, in 1967 a piece of neolithic pottery was found at Luce Bay in Wigtownshire which bore a clear impression of a piece of woollen cloth the earliest so far in Britain.