Användningsområden för perforerade cylinderkärl -En studie av bottenlösa perforerade cylinderkärl och dess möjliga användningsområden med fokus på högre temperaturer

Sammanfattning: The essay discusses the so called perforated vessels and especially the cylindrical vessels without any bottom found in among others Skåne. The main question is whether these could be used within craftsmanship requiring high temperatures such as bronze-melting. To do this I have undertaken a number of experiments on witch this essay is based on. Three different kinds of crafts were tested: bronze-melting, iron forging and production of glass beads. Besides this I also met temperatures in the vessels, witch I compiled to diagrams (see appendix). Twelve different types of vessels were tested of witch 7 were more or less copies made from 4 kinds of reconstructed vessels. The conclusion is that perforated cylindrical vessels could have been used to make glass beads (5 out of 7 tested perforated turned out to bee useful, plus one non perforated vessel). Theoretically 6 out of 12 vessels were also useful for iron forging, thou it did not work during experiments probably because the coal I used were divided in to small bits, witch restrains the heat increase. None of the tested vessels were able to melt bronze thou some of them seems to have been used in a metalworking context. To conclude, some of the vessels turned out to be quite useful while others were useless in the sense of reaching high temperatures. Melting bronze were probably not a main task for this kind of vessels, but their presence in metalwork-context shows a connection with bronze-melting, perhaps as a pre-heather for the mould? Most of the vessels who were copies of archaeological findings were also the ones who reached the highest temperatures. But the only vessel who reached a temperature on over 1100oC. on mere self-draught were a non perforated. This points to the conclusion that even if these vessels were used for crafts demanding high temperatures they were not supposed to reach the highest. Therefor they must have been used in a context were you would need a controlled temperature. This, of course, based upon the theory that they were on the whole used in this particular kind of way.