Cooking Pots as Burial Urns

Fit for purpose? Organic residue analysis and vessel specialisation: The perfectly utilitarian medieval pottery assemblage from West Cotton, Raunds

“…Salque et al 2013). Nonculinary uses for ceramic vessels include as funerary receptacles (Boast 1995;Edwards et al 1997;Rafferty et al 2015), lamps (Evershed et al 1997;1999;Mottram et al 1999;Colombini et al 2005;Heron et al 2013;Blinkhorn et al 2017), beehives (Evershed et al 2003), as chamber-pots or urinals (Moorhouse 1978), for cosmetic, medicinal and embalming purposes (Moorhouse 1978;Saliu et al 2011;Facchetti et al 2012;Fraser et al 2012) and in ritual or religious ceremonies (Mathe et al 2007;Le Maguer 2011;Baeten et al 2014). They have also been used in manufacturing roles, including tanning and dyeing (McGovern and Michel 1984;1985;Karmon and Spanier 1987;Koren 1995;Reese 2010), salt production (Charlton 1969;Horiuchi et al 2011;Weller 2015;Maritan et al 2018), in metallurgy (as crucibles and moulds; Tylecote 1986;Doce 2006), for casting lime (Lilburn 1963;Moorhouse 1978) and are thought to have been used for the manufacture of tar by pyrolysis and/or distillation of pine and birch bark (Heron et al 1991;Regert et al 2003;Lucquin et al 2007;Urem-Kotsou et al 2018).…”