CINERARY URNS AWD INCENSE CUPS, STANTON MOOR. 47 



are vertical from the middle upwards, while below the vessel 

 is bevelled off to a small flat bottom. The vertical portion is 

 ornamented with incised lines disposed as a band of zig-zags, 

 five lines abreast, and confined between two double horizontal 

 lines. The intervening triangular spaces are perforated. It is 

 very usual for these little vessels to be pierced with two or more 

 small holes, evidently for suspension during some part of the 

 funeral ceremony, but this is the only Derbyshire example, so 

 far as I am aware, in which the perforations form part of the 

 decorative scheme. But such open-sided vessels have occasionally 

 been found in other parts of the country. One not unlike this 

 Stanton example is figured on page 78 of Green well's " British 

 Barrows." I may add that I have never before seen a piece of 

 pre-historic pottery so truly and beautifully modelled. 



Some weeks after the above, another urn and cup — "the old 

 man's snuff-box," as the quarryman described it — were found close 

 by the same spot. Unfortunately, these were completely broken 

 up before xMr. Heathcote heard of the discovery. The cup was 

 within the urn as before. 



The open-sidedness of the " incense cup " is not without some 

 bearing upon the vexed question of their use. The old view was 

 that they were censers ; but, as the Rev. Canon Green- 

 well urges, this " appears to imply a state of refinement to which 

 we can scarcely consider the people who used them to have 

 attained." Another view is that they were lamps. This is 

 absurd ; how could oil be kept in perforated and open-sided 

 vessels? That they may have contained the ashes of some 

 particular part of the body, as the heart, is more tenable. But 

 still more so is the theory that they were used for the remains of 

 infants. These cups are occasionally found with burnt bones in 

 them ; indeed, this is said to have been the case with our present 

 example. It is by no means uncommon to find the skeleton of 

 an infant or young child associated with that of a woman in the 

 unburnt burials of the Bronze .Age, indicating, probably, that 

 rather than allow the tender offspring to lack a mother's care or 

 be a burden to the tribe, it was slaughtered and buried with its 



