An Early Bronze Age Urned Burial from Crowmeole, Shrewsbury, Shropshire

An early Bronze Age urned burial was revealed in July 2015 during archaeological investigations on land to the west of Crowmeole Lane, on the south-western side of Shrewsbury, Shropshire. A small oval pit contained an inverted urn which had survived undisturbed and fully intact up to the point of discovery. The classification of this urn is challenging: it may belong to the wider Collared Urn tradition based on form, but in strict typological terms can be considered a Food Vessel Urn/ Collared Urn hybrid. Enclosed within was a cremation deposit, probably once bagged, as well as a burnt and fractured worked stone knife. The vessel also exhibited an internal charred residue, thought to relate to earlier use. Scientific dating of the residue, along with the cremated bone, suggested that the burial took place around 2000BC. The cremation deposit included the remains of an individual adult, probably a female, and mainly comprised bone, rather than pyre material, indicative of carefully managed collection. As a result, the recorded weight of bone is amongst the highest for a single cremation burial from the British Isles for any period, and in the upper regions of the consistently high range of weights for Bronze Age deposits.