The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

• Chapter Nineteen -

B

Figure 19.5 (A) Fingertip impressions on a vessel from Ponders End, Essex; (B) 'tooled'
decoration and dot-stabs on a vessel from Margate, Kent.

Indeed, if combs rather than roulette wheels were employed, then they might
have been used not only to impress but to score the surfaces of pots, in which case
a very different effect of multiple parallel incision could be created (Figure 19.7A)
and used functionally to rusticate the surfaces of some larger vessels: this usage
would facilitate better handling. Random linear incisions are also used (Figure
19·7B)..
In comparison to preceding periods, the used of plastic decoration, that is
decoration which is raised or applied to the vessels' surface, is rare in the iron age
repertoire. Cable cordons of the earliest iron age ceramics have already been
mentioned. A horizontal cordon, usually round the upper third of the vessel, is raised
from the surface of the pot and decorated with S-shaped fingernail impressions. This
decorative motif is particularly common on vessels from Staple Howe (Brewster
1963), though by no means restricted to northern England. Raised cordons are used
also to emphasize changes in direction of a pot's profile and to emphasize zones of
decoration. This is particularly common on the late haematite bowls. In Scotland,
elaborate impressed cordons, both raised and applied, are found in the later iron age
ceramics of the Northern and Western Isles, such as from the broch sites of Clettraval
(MacKie 1971) and Clickhimin (Hamilton 1968). But the best known examples of
cordons are those on the cordoned ware jars and bowls of the later Iron Age in the
south-west peninsula (Threipland 1957).