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Histories of Northamptonshire
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Bronze Age Beaker

2050 - 1900 BCE Geologic to Prehistoric

HIghly decorated pottery vessel, known as a Beaker pot. Found as part of a male burial marked by a Bronze Age round barrow.

Bronze Age pottery vessel or Beaker © NMAG
Bronze Age pottery vessel or Beaker
Burial Plan of excavated Bronze Age Beaker barrow burial at Stanwick Lakes © Andy Chapman
Burial Plan of excavated Bronze Age Beaker barrow burial at Stanwick Lakes
Drawing of Bronze Age Beaker showing decoration © Andy Chapman
Drawing of Bronze Age Beaker showing decoration

This Bronze Age pottery beaker was made some 4,000 years ago and buried along with other grave goods with an individual male under an earthern mound known as a round barrow. It lay at the feet of a man who had died at around the age of 30, and the round barrow close was later hidden beneath the stone buildings of the medieval hamlet of West Cotton, Raunds. It was only discovered when the site was excavated in the mid 1980s before the construction of the A605 Raunds to Stanwick bypass, which now runs over his burial site.

Some 4,500 years ago the Beaker People carried the secrets of copper, bronze and gold working across Europe to Britain and this beaker is characteristic of the highly decorated pots they created.

The beaker helps tell the story of how these people settled, lived and died in Northamptonshire during the Bronze Age. Until the 1950s it was believed thought that the county had only been properly settled in the Iron Age, some 2,000 years later.

Number 12 of the objects selected for the A History of Northamptonshire in 100 Objects Exhibition 2025

Stanwick Lakes - Bronze Age Barrow
Contributed by Andy Chapman, Northamptonshire Archaeological Society

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