Peterborough ware is a decorated British Neolithic pottery style of the early to middle English Neolithic. Named after

Peterborough Peterborough ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in the City of Peterborough district in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. The city is north of London, on the River Nene. A ...

, the nearest city to where the style was first discovered, it is found in the region of South-East England and

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

. it is known for the impressed pits made by bone or wood implements in its sides. Whipped cord was also used to make circular 'maggot' patterns. Ebbsfleeet ware, Fengate ware and Mortlake ware have been identified as subdivisions of Peterborough ware. The term was introduced by R. A. Smith based on examples found at Fengate, near Peterborough. It originally referred to all neolithic impressed ware, without restricting by location, but now primarily refers to finds of this type in southern and eastern England. The earliest form of Peterborough ware is known as Ebbsfleet style and had minimal decoration, although this later became more complex. Peterborough ware may have evolved from the earlier Grimston-Lyles Hill ware, around 3500 BC. Later varieties are known as

Mortlake Mortlake is a suburban district of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames on the south bank of the River Thames between Kew and Barnes, London, Barnes. Historically it was part of Surrey and until 1965 was in the Municipal Borough of Barnes ...

and Fengate sub-styles although the sequential chronological scheme of evolution from Ebbsfleet, through Mortlake to Fengate established by Smith (1956), has been called into question by a reading of associated radiocarbon data (Kinnes and Gibson 1997). While this reading suggests all three subgroups were actually more or less contemporary, current research at the University of Sheffield suggests this may still be a contentious issue.

Archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

have described the makers of Peterborough ware as the Peterborough culture, but the term has fallen out of favour as further discoveries have cast doubt on the idea that a single unified society produced these artefacts.

References

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Peterborough Ware Archaeological cultures of Europe English pottery Stone Age Britain History of Peterborough Ancient pottery