Late Bronze Age, Bronze Cauldron, HCA 458

This bronze cauldron was discovered at Toome near Ballyscullion, Co. Antrim. The body and rim are made from eight pieces of beaten bronze, each hammered to a thickness of about 1mm and riveted together. The horizontal rows of conical-headed rivets on the exterior are both functional and decorative. The handles are each made of four pieces of bronze: a cast circular ring of complex ribbed cross-section, a sheet-bronze ribbed and flanged U-shaped tube and two other sheet-bronze half-tubes riveted to the rim edges. The rim was strengthened by the attachment of eight vertical slender bronze stays riveted to the body exterior. All but one of these are broken, suggesting that the rim was at one time subjected to quite a load. The interior of the base displays many small, irregular indentations, as if hit repeatedly by a hard object. Similar cauldrons are known from Late Bronze Age Europe, c. 800 BC. Careful and frequent repairs show they were highly prized, and in Ireland most were deposited in watery places, such as bogs possibly as votive offerings.