Beaker from Fodderty

04 May 2011

News Type:

Find of the Month

This Bronze Age pot was found in a cist burial at Fodderty Farm between Dingwall and Strathpeffer in Easter Ross. It is a type called a beaker, used to hold a drink to accompany the deceased. Beakers have a distinctive S-shaped profile, and are decorated on much of the body, often with geometric patterns as in this case. In this burial six flint flakes were placed in a corner of the cist (stone coffin), together with the pot and crouched body.

The cist burial at Fodderty Farm is one of five known in this area between Dingwall and Strathpeffer, all on the north side of the Peffery, some higher up on the slopes. This one is the best preserved. A further three cist burials were recorded at Croch Fionne in Strathpeffer in 1896, although the exact location cannot be determined and the contents were not preserved.

Beaker burials represent a new tradition in the Bronze Age, and appear with the first evidence of metalwork. They generally date between c. 2400 and 1700 BC. From this time individual burial became popular over much of Scotland, unlike the earlier Neolithic burials which generally contained more than one individual. Many, as in this case, were buried in short stone coffins (cists), where the body was crouched if an inhumation (as in this burial). In most cases, the only item to be buried with the dead was a pot containing an offering of food (in a food vessel) or drink (in a beaker). In some cases these burials contain other gravegoods, generally a flint tool.

Beaker burials occur Europe as well as the rest of Britain. The sudden appearance of beakers and new traditions of burial was viewed as evidence of invasion in the past, but more recently interpreted as showing a package of new ideas and artefacts sweeping over the region. Currently there are research programmes using strontium isotope analysis to research where beaker people were born.

This pot, together with some of others found in the Highlands can be seen in Inverness Museum and Art Gallery.

Further information
Highland Council Historic Environment Record MHG9046
Robin Hanley and Alison Sheridan 1994. ‘A beaker cist from Balblair, near Beauly, Inverness district,’ Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 124, pp. 129-139, esp. p. 137
Available at Inverness Reference Library or on-line by clicking here .