Bronze Age cremation burial, South Rochford (EHER 9908)

Soldiers digging First World War trenches found a Bronze Age cinerary urn, possibly inverted over cremated remains, and associated with gold plated shale beads. Amber beads may have come from the same burial. The finds are with Colchester and Essex Museum.

Bronze Age cinerary urn inverted over burial with gold and amber beads. <1> <2> <3> The artefacts were found in 1914 and purchased by Colchester Museum. They comprise three fragments of the urn, shale bead with two thin gold plates meeting in the centre, ornamented by 5 groups of engraved parallel lines; a small bead of the same type with portions of engraved gold covering remaining; 4 gold plates from 2 similar beads; amber, disc-shaped bead, imperfect; small bead of similar type. The urn was too broken to be preserved. <3> <4> The bead was found by soldiers digging trenches in World War I. In the museum Accessions Book the amber was added in a note, as if it had brought in at a slightly later date. If the extra beads do belong to the original discovery, the grave goods consist of 4 gold plated cone shaped shale beads and 11 amber beads. According to source <7> the urn was found inverted over funerary ashes. It is assumed that the urn was the usual overlapping rim or collared urn. Source <6> has sketches of the beads. <6> <7> See also <8>. Note: The mapped location is a generic 4-figure grid reference. Original HER entry merged with NRHE data import.