Artefacts from the boat-site at North Ferriby, Humberside, England

Abstract

It is thirty years since the first publication (Wright and Wright 1947) of the collection of artifacts found over a period of years from the site at North Ferriby, which yielded the three boat-relics now identified as of the Early or Middle Bronze Age. With the increasing recognition of the importance of the boat finds themselves, the latest information on which has recently been published in a National Maritime Museum Monograph (Wright 1976), it is timely to review and, where necessary, revise the descriptions and attributions of the other artifacts obtained from the clays in which the boats were sealed, and also a small number of finds from the underlying fen-woodland peat. The customary and essential caveat needs to be entered that in beds of this kind propinquity of one find to another, whether in the horizontal or vertical plane, is no guarantee of association. Nevertheless, as will be seen, revised identifications and attributions of some of the objects have resulted in a pattern which is much more consistent both in itself and also with the recent evidence for the age of the boats than the somewhat confusing picture which emerged from what seemed to be reasonable deductions in 1946–7.