Late medieval buried storage jar at 175 Swan Street, Sible Hedingham (EHER 80337)

The buried pot is of unknown usage, and is unlikely to be cooking remains.

May 2015. Trial trenching. Historic OS maps show no buildings present on the site, although the 1876 OS map shows it as being divided by a boundary from east to west. Also of note is that the site appears as a separate parcel of land on historic maps and is not shown as associated with the Sugar Loaves until the 1955 OS map. It thought that the site was an open field until it was incorporated into the land adjacent to the pub. The earliest and most intriguing feature is the heavily truncated inverted pot. The pot itself appears to be deliberately deposited within a purpose dug hole and is of a mid 15th to mid 16th century date. The bones present within the remains of the pot are from several different species, with at least three distinct individual animals. The high percentage of skull fragments and small amount of butchery marks seem to rule out the bone being table waste. It may have been a deliberate deposition of animal bone, but the relatively small number and the large amount of soil within the pot make this unlikely. It is possible the pot was filled with soil that happened to have a portion of animal bone within it, either before or after its truncation. However, this all fails to explain the reason for the pot’s initial burial. Of the features that remain, the two rubbish pits in are consistent with the interpretation of the site as an open field, with both containing large amounts of post-medieval waste as well as residual medieval pot sherds. The pig burial likewise fits into the interpretation of a pasture or open field. The usual explanation for an isolated animal burial is the slaughter of an individual that has contracted an infectious disease, that the farmer would not want to affect the rest of his livestock. <1>