Collections Online
Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
Advanced Search
Late Bronze Age bronze bucket
Of continental Hallstat "B" ("Kurd") type, with rounded shoulder (now somewhat damaged) and everted, externally convex rim. The upper part is made of two equal sheets riveted vertically together and horizontally to a trunconic lower portion hammered from a single sheet. Item has a hollow base standing on a foot-ring, strengthened at cardinal points by four H-shaped plates each fastened horizontally by four rivets to the base angle. The rim is formed by rolling the top of the upper sheet of the bucket round a stout copper alloy wire. The bucket is suspended by two cast copper alloy rings, of diamond-shaped section, attached to sheet copper alloy carriers which are fastened by five rivets to the top of the seams joining the two upper sheets of the bucket, and by three rivets to the inside of the rim (in the case of one of the carriers the latter have disappeared).
This bronze bucket once held around 35 litres of liquid, probably ale or mead.
LI2.1
Collection Area
Item Number
Find Information
Site Name: Ty'n-y-coed Farm, Arthog
Notes: The bucket was originally provenanced on entry into the Museum as coming from Nannau Park, at Dolgellau in Merionethshire, where it had been found in 1880/81. W.J.Hemp, in the 'Journal of the Merionethshire Historical Society' (1960), pp.353-39, argues that the bucket found in 1880/81 was the same bucket that was found in 1826 at the findspot stated above, but subsequently lost. Hemp cites Lewis's 'Topographical Dictionary' (1840, 2nd edition) as containing the original information for the finding of the bucket, under the entry for Llangelynin, where the dimensions stated are almost identical to the bucket found at Nannau. As Arthog is only appoximately seven miles from Nannau Park, Hemp argued that it would be unlikely that two buckets of such rarity would be in the same area, therefore the two buckets were identical.
Acquisition
Measurements
Material
Location
Collections Online is updated regularly, but please confirm that an object remains on display before making a special visit.