Later Prehistoric Pottery in England and Wales (Shire archaeology series) [Paperback]

I am very much at home with pottery of the earlier prehistoric period in Britain and was hoping that this book would serve as a starting point for investigations into later prehistoric pottery, about which I am embarrassingly ignorant.

The Chapters:
-Introduction
-Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age
-Early Iron Age
-Middle period
-Later Middle Period
-Late Period
-Very Late Pottery
-Decoration on Later Pottery
-Methods of Manufacture
-Processing Pottery and Understanding Reports
-Glossary
-Museums
-Further Reading
Index

The preface says that the book covers the period from 1000BC to the mid 1st century AD and points out that pottery is important because ceramic survives when other things do not. The author goes on to say that the book's purpose is to show the layman how professionals can interpret pottery (and in this I would say it fails).

In the introduction Elsdon explains again why pottery is important, what it was used for, how it was made and how and why it is studied. She puts the Iron Age briefly into its continental context and explains the dating system used.

In Chapter 2 "Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age" Elsdon opens more than somewhat confusingly with a reference to a type of Bronze Age pottery (Deverll-Rimbury ware) that she doesn't describe or discuss here or elsewhere in the book. She refers readers to another book to find anything out about the subject. The discussion of the other types of pottery was somewhat chaotic, and failed to clearly state the geographical distribution of each type mentioned. No conclusions were drawn. The main problem is that instead of discussing regions she jumps from site to site giving individual examples instead of giving coherent overviews. This leads to an incredibly fragmented feel, and it is difficult to get any sense of what is going on.

Chapter 3 moves more firmly into the Iron Age, with a discussion of the period c.800-600BC. This is a less confusing chapter with more generalizations, but Elsdon is still working through individual sites rather than using sites to illustrate regional overviews. There is still far too much detail presented without accompanying explanations.

The next two chapters are very similar, and it is difficult to make much sense of what is happening and how changes should be interpreted.

Chapter 6, "The Late Period", is much more helpful with more overviews and general explanations than in previous chapters.

Chapter 7 explains Gallo-Belgic pottery and its dating and forms. This is a surprisingly coherent chapter. Categorizations are explained, Iron Age types are described and trends and dating are discussed.

In Chapter 8 decoration on later pottery forms is discussed. This is done on a regional basis, highlighting regional styles.

Chapter 9 provides a short but excellent and straight forward explanation of pottery manufacture and the dates at which new techniques, like wheel-throwing and kilns, were added.

In Chapter 10, "Processing Pottery and Understanding Reports", Elsdon describes how pottery is handled from excavation and recorded and analyzed for publication.

Overall I was seriously unimpressed with this book, which is a surprise because Shire Publications are normally of a very high standard. Not only did I fail to make head or tail of the earlier chapters (pre Chapter 7) but I couldn't work out what I was supposed to be getting out of them because they were so very fragmentary and there was no summary for each chapter explaining what the data meant and how it fitted in with other data types. This book is more of a gazetteer than a guide. I suppose that at a push it could work as a short reference to the pottery found at individual sites but it is not a good introduction to what, in fairness to the author, is a clearly complex topic. It is actually a lot easier to detect trends by looking at the illustrations than from reading the text. The illustrations, fortunately, are numerous and excellent.

Finally, the term "later prehistory" may be misleading as it implies a comprehensive view of the Later Bronze Age as well as the Iron Age, but the Later Bronze Age is actually mentioned only as an introduction to the Iron Age.