46 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF YORK AND DISTRICT 



derived from the highly decorated NeoHthic bowls (41). Food- vessels 

 are essentially a north-country pottery with its chief centre in Yorkshire, 

 whence come 340 examples. Their provenance reveals the mingling of 

 the Early Bronze Age invaders with the long-barrow people, a mingling 

 that led to the extinction of the beaker ware, the spread of cremation at 

 the expense of inhumation, and ultimately to the homogeneous insular 

 culture of the Mid Bronze Age. For cremation led to the custom of 

 depositing the ashes of the dead in urns which at first only differed from 

 food-vessels in being larger. The transition is well displayed by several 

 Yorkshire urns, notably one from Hinderwell Beacon, N.R., which not 

 only resembles a food- vessel in shape, but was also associated with a small 

 food-vessel (25). In time the urn developed into large and small vessels 

 with overhanging rims, the most abundant and most widespread species 

 of prehistoric pottery in Yorkshire, 400 to 500 being known with the 

 certainty that many more await discovery. The contemporary incense 

 cups, of which 170 have been found, can also be traced back to the food- 

 vessel. Elgee suggests that they held offerings to the cremated dead (18). 



Elgee has dealt in detail with the distribution of these wares in East 

 Yorkshire (18). Beakers are most abundant on the Wolds (130 examples) ; 

 with isolated examples from near Thirsk, Pickering, and Whitby in North- 

 East Yorkshire ; and a few from the West Riding. Food-vessels show a 

 wider distribution. They are most numerous on the Wolds (254 examples), 

 on the limestone hills between Pickering and Scarborough, and thence 

 sparingly northwards along the coast. Fewer than a dozen are recorded 

 from the West Riding. 



Both wares are practically absent from the moors and dales of North-East 

 Yorkshire, where, however, urns are very numerous, more so than on the 

 Wolds, on which they are comparatively rare. They have occurred on 

 the Howardian Hills, in the Vale of York north of Boroughbridge, and in 

 Airedale, Calderdale, the Don Valley, and elsewhere in West Yorkshire. 

 The increase of population during the Bronze Age is convincingly revealed 

 by these figures and distributions. 



Elgee ascribes many settlement sites on the Eastern Moorlands to what 

 he terms the urn culture. They are marked by large urn barrows on 

 the ridges and by cemeteries, often containing hundreds of cairns probably 

 covering inhumations, standing stones, flint implements (scrapers, three- 

 tanged arrow-heads and ruder tools), irregular cultivation plots, sometimes 

 forming low terraces or lynchets on slopes, and hut-pits. Many settle- 

 ments are now the site of farms of which they were the forerunners, and 

 the position of which is often just below the moor edge or well down the 

 sides of the dales. Others survive on spurs between valleys, the best 

 preserved occurring on Glaisdale, Danby, and Crown End Riggs in 

 Eskdale. These spurs were defended by single, double, or even 

 quadruple cross-ridge ditches and ramparts, strengthened by parapets of 

 rude upright stones such as can be well seen on Crown End and Guis- 

 borough Moor (18). A further account of these sites will be given in a 

 paper on the human geography of the Eastern Moorlands (Section E). 



A semicircular camp on Eston Nab (800 ft.) in the extreme north-east 

 of the county has been partially excavated and will be described in a paper 



