The Armour Archive

Early Anglo-Saxon Buckets: A Corpus of Alloy and Iron-Bound, Stave-Built Vessels
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

There's also Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Buckets: Database of the Archive of Jean M. Cook.

Please note that these are EARLY Anglo-Saxon buckets - no later than about the 8th century - and that they are small, very ornate, rather than "fetching water" type buckets - the largest no more than 8 inches in diameter.

I did a review of this book for the late lamented "Mediaeval History" magazine in the UK, and though these were very interesting buckets, nobody is sure what their function was - it seems to be ceremonial rather than everyday - they are usually found in the graves of the wealthy, and may have been used at feasts to hold drink.

[i]Book Review
Early Anglo-Saxon Buckets
by Jean M. Cook, ed. Birte Brugmann
Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2004
price:

This book marks the culmination of a lifetime’s work - almost 50 years of careful investigation and cataloguing of what is, admittedly, a rather esoteric subject – buckets of the early Anglo-Saxon period.

The author died before she had an opportunity to publish her findings, and this volume is the result of a posthumous collaboration of her friends and colleagues in collating and editing her researches. The book is paralleled by an on-line database at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

Consisting of 339 examples from 152 sites throughout England, the entries are restricted to buckets made of timber staves with metal reinforcements – other methods of construction have been specifically omitted – and cover only the first few centuries of the Anglo-Saxon occupation. Presumably this is because most examples come from burials, and once England became Christian in the seventh century CE, the practice of burying grave goods with the body ceased.

The author developed a system of describing and categorising buckets, based upon the form and decoration of their metal fittings. High quality illustrations – both line drawings and photographs – clearly show examples of each description and feature.

This study had to be carried out part-time, during the author’s employment as a curator of various museums and later as an administrator of the Open University. She visited the museums which held these artifacts from 1953 to the 1990s, carefully recording the details of each item. In later years, having improved her criteria, she returned to re-examine artifacts from earlier expeditions.

Nearly all the surviving wooden staves turn out to be made of yew, a surprising material considering the poisonous nature of the leaves, berries and wood dust of this timber. Hoops and fittings are of copper alloy and/or iron, and the author devotes considerable space to descriptions of the details of decoration, construction and assembly. At one point she took part in the reconstruction of a bucket of this type ab initio, gaining useful “hands-onâ€Â

"Late, lamented"???

I think I read that review, without noting your name.

I can get the mag here, in the middle of Kansas.

Unfortunately, yes. It appears, after a promising infancy, to have died young. To my sorrow (and I didn't get paid for the review).