If you have followed the correct
co-ordinates you will now find yourself standing by a small plaque
attached to a wall just below the village of Llanharry.
Until the closing of the iron ore
mine in the mid 70's it could be truthfully said that the history
of the small village of Llanharry had been inextricably linked with
iron since the time of the Romans or even earlier.
This small plaque reminds us that the
earliest known visitors were not miners, but a much earlier
semi-nomadic tribe of Bronze Age people known as Beaker Folk from
around 4000 years ago.
The plaque was erected in the 1960's
by the Parish Council as a result of pupil pressure from the
Primary School and commemorates a chance find at Naboth's vineyard
in September 1929 by workmen preparing a new road between Llanharan
and Llanharry.
They found a stone-lined grave (or
cist), beneath a circular mound of earth known as a barrow. The
grave contained a finely decorated pot, known as a 'Beaker' and the
skeleton of a man, aged about 35 and 5' 9" in height. The 8" tall
beaker now known as the "The Naboth Vineyard Beaker" would have
been handmade and fired in a bonfire.
The man himself was found lying on
his right side, with his head facing north and his knees up to his
chin. The skeleton was scrubbed and cleaned by the late Mrs. Eliza
Johns on a table at her nearby cottage before being preserved with
the pot at The National Museum of Wales.
From this, and many other discoveries
like it, it looks like these Beakers were very special pots, being
placed beside someone when they were buried. Their shape suggests
that they were drinking vessels. They possibly contain offerings of
alcohol to accompany people into the afterlife. In fact, when
found, this beaker contained "slimy stuff"- could this have been
the rotted remains of a funeral offering? - Unfortunately, it was
washed out before archaeologists could retrieve and analyse
it.
This Beaker was made by rolling clay
into long strips joined together at the ends to form rings that
were smoothed to give the vessel shape. When the clay had dried a
little, the vessel was polished (burnished) with a blunt tool,
possibly of bone. Decoration was added with a toothed tool
resulting in a distinctive pattern reminiscent of textile or worked
leather. Finally, the Beaker was fired, giving it a rich,
mottled,orange-brown colour.
Beaker pots and Beaker burials became
common across much of Europe between 2800-2000BC. They are often
found with daggers, flint arrowheads, and items of gold, amber, jet
and bone. In the past, it was believed that Beakers belonged to an
innovative people, called the "Beaker Folk", who migrated around
Europe and invaded Britain, bringing their artefacts with
them.
Recently, an alternative theory has
been put forward. This sees the Beaker phenomenon as a spread of
common ideas or fashions across Europe, rather than a spread of
people. The Beaker fashion was adopted by the people of Britain, as
a result of contact and trade with Continental Europe. In Wales,
few early Beaker burials are known, and those that have been
radiocarbon dated tend to be from 2300-1800BC. Beaker settlements
are very rare.