Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near the English town of Woodbridge. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when a previously undisturbed ship burial containing a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts was discovered. The site is important in establishing the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia as well as illuminating the Anglo-Saxons during a period which lacks historical documentation.
A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtight cavity which can be expanded and contracted by operating the handles, and fitted with a valve allowing air to fill the cavity when expanded, and with a tube through which the air is forced out in a stream when the cavity is compressed. It has many applications, in particular blowing on a fire to supply it with air.
A cauldron is a large pot (kettle) for cooking or boiling over an open fire, with a lid and frequently with an arc-shaped hanger and/or integral handles or feet. There is a rich history of cauldron lore in religion, mythology, and folklore.
The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of Central Europe, often divided into several local cultures within a broader Urnfield tradition. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns, which were then buried in fields. Over much of Europe, the Urnfield culture followed the Tumulus culture and was succeeded by the Hallstatt culture. Some linguists and archaeologists have associated this culture with the Proto-Celtic language, or a pre-Celtic language family.
A Dutch oven is a thick-walled cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid. Dutch ovens are usually made of seasoned cast iron; however, some Dutch ovens are instead made of cast aluminium, or ceramic. Some metal varieties are enameled rather than being seasoned, and these are sometimes called French ovens. Dutch ovens have been used as cooking vessels for hundreds of years. They are often called casserole dishes in some English-speaking countries other than the United States, and cocottes in French. They are similar to both the Japanese tetsunabe and the sač, a traditional Balkan cast-iron oven, and are related to the South African potjie, the Australian Bedourie oven and Spanish cazuela.
Lost-wax casting is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture is cast from an original sculpture. Intricate works can be achieved by this method.
Irish stew is a stew native to Ireland that is traditionally made with root vegetables and lamb or mutton, but also commonly with beef. As in all traditional folk dishes, the exact recipe is not consistent from time to time, or place to place. Basic ingredients include lamb, or mutton, as well as potatoes, onions, and parsley. It may sometimes also include carrots. Irish stew is also made with kid.
Irish stew is a celebrated Irish dish, yet its composition is a matter of dispute. Purists maintain that the only acceptable and traditional ingredients are neck mutton chops or kid, potatoes, onions, and water. Others would add such items as carrots, turnips and pearl barley; but the purists maintain that they spoil the true flavour of the dish. The ingredients are boiled and simmered slowly for up to two hours. Mutton was the dominant ingredient because the economic importance of sheep lay in their wool and milk produce and this ensured that only old or economically non-viable animals ended up in the cooking pot, where they needed hours of slow cooking. Irish stew is the product of a culinary tradition that relied almost exclusively on cooking over an open fire. It seems that Irish stew was recognised as early as about 1800.
In archaeology or anthropology, a pot boiler or cooking stone is a heated stone used to heat water - typically by people who did not have access to pottery or metal vessels.
Llyn Cerrig Bach is a small lake located between Rhosneigr and Valley in the west of Anglesey, Wales.
The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.
The Atlantic Bronze Age is a cultural complex of the Bronze Age period in Prehistoric Europe of approximately 1300–700 BC that includes different cultures in Britain, France, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.
Sets and individual examples of ritual bronzes survive from when they were made mainly during the Chinese Bronze Age. Ritual bronzes create quite an impression both due to their sophistication of design and manufacturing process, but also because of their remarkable durability. From around 1650 BCE, these elaborately decorated vessels were deposited as grave goods in the tombs of royalty and the nobility, and were evidently produced in very large numbers, with documented excavations finding over 200 pieces in a single royal tomb. They were produced for an individual or social group to use in making ritual offerings of food and drink to his or their ancestors and other deities or spirits. Such ceremonies generally took place in family temples or ceremonial halls over tombs. These ceremonies can be seen as ritual banquets in which both living and dead members of a family were supposed to participate. Details of these ritual ceremonies are preserved through early literary records. On the death of the owner of a ritual bronze, it would often be placed in his tomb, so that he could continue to pay his respects in the afterlife; other examples were cast specifically as grave goods. Indeed, many surviving examples have been excavated from graves.
The Hagia Triada Sarcophagus is a late Minoan 137 cm (54 in)-long limestone sarcophagus, dated to about 1400 BC or some decades later, excavated from a chamber tomb at Hagia Triada, Crete in 1903, and now on display in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum ("AMH") in Crete.
The Dunaverney Flesh-Hook is a sophisticated bronze artefact from Prehistoric Ireland, thought to be an item of ceremonial feasting gear, and a symbol of authority. It is believed it was used to remove chunks of meat from a stew in a large cauldron for serving. It dates to the Late Bronze Age, between 1050 and 900 BC. Since 1856, it has been in the British Museum in London.
The Little Thetford flesh-hook is a late Bronze-Age artefact discovered in 1929 in Little Thetford, near Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. A flesh-hook is a metal hook with a long handle used to pull meat out of a pot or hides out of tan-pits. This particular find is one of 32 other such archaeologically significant finds, scatters, and excavations within 1 square mile (2.6 km2) of Little Thetford.
Rotbav “La Pârâuț” is a Bronze Age site in southeastern Transylvania, Romania, located at the southern border of the modern village of Rotbav, in Feldioara Commune, and 20 km north of Braşov, capital of the county by the same name. The settlement of Rotbav is situated upon a high terrace formation above the Olt River. Its importance lies in a long stratigraphy comprising the timespan from the Early Bronze Age to the Bronze Age / Iron Age transition. It is the most extensively researched site of this period in the region.
In many areas of Scandinavia, a wide variety of items were deposited in lakes and bogs from the Mesolithic period through to the Middle Ages. Such items include earthenware, decorative metalwork, weapons, and human corpses, known as bog bodies. As Kaul noted, "we cannot get away from the fact that the depositions in the bogs were connected with the ritual/religious sphere."
The archaeology of Igbo-Ukwu revealed bronze artifacts dated to the 9th century A.D. which were initially discovered by Isiah Anozie in 1939 while digging a well in his compound in Igbo-Ukwu, an Igbo town in Anambra State, Nigeria. As a result of these finds, three archaeological sites were excavated in 1959 and 1964 by Charles Thurstan Shaw which revealed more than 700 high quality artifacts of copper, bronze and iron, as well as about 165,000 glass, carnelian and stone beads, pottery, textiles and ivory beads, cups, horns. They are the oldest bronze artifacts known in West Africa and were manufactured centuries before the emergence of other known bronze producing centers such as those of Ife and Benin. The bronzes include numerous ritual vessels, pendants, crowns, breastplates, staff ornaments, swords, and fly-whisk handles.
The Battersea Cauldron is a large bronze cooking vessel, dated to 800BC to 700BC. It is one of around 60 examples of similar Iron Age cauldrons found in Great Britain and Ireland.
