Pot

This ceramic pot was found in a burial cairn, in a cairn cemetery called 'Fairy Knowes' at Housegord at Weesdale in Shetland. It had contained cremated bones. It probably dates from between 1800 and 1200 BC.

The pot is decorated with impressions of whipped cord, arranged in horizontal bands. It has been reconstructed from fragments.

Inhabitants of the Northern Isles had their own distinctive funerary customs during the 2nd millennium BC, burying their dead in distinctive pots. Cremation took place close to the grave, and seaweed was often used as fuel for the pyre.

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