Note on a Pottery Mask and Sherds of Mediaeval Pottery found at the Bass of Inverurie, with some particulars of the Bass

Abstract

The sherds were found while digging in an extension of the cemetery and consist of a bearded mask, a segment of the base of a large jug, and a portion of the lip of a similar vessel. The mask appears to have been fairly common on pitchers of the fourteenth century. The second piece of pottery, the segment of the base of a large jar, shows a continuous row of impressed thumb-marks around its edge, and by this feature tends to confirm the fourteenth-century date of the pottery mask. The third object is a portion of the lip of a pitcher of a light-red body coated with a thick lead glaze of deep-green colour and may be of 12th or 13 century. The Bass is a mound, in shape a truncated cone, about 50 feet in height, which occupies a strong position on the right bank of the Ury, close to the southern end of the royal burgh of Inverurie and is classified as a mount-and-bailey castle of Norman type.