Cups

The Ringlemere and Rillaton Gold Cups are made from a single piece of metal beaten to create sinuous corrugation and decorated with rows of pointillé. These are the two examples of gold cup known from Britain and Ireland which are dated according to typological parallels and their funerary context (Needham et al. 2006).

Dating and areas of discovery

Date: circa 1700 BC-1500 BC
Distribution: Very rare only two examples from Kent and Cornwall.

Examples

Ringlemere gold cup PAS-BE40C2

Rillaton gold cup BM DR.39.a

References

• Needham et al. 2006
• I.A. Kinnes, British Bronze Age metalwork-1 (London, The British Museum Press, 1994)
• E. Smirke, 'Some account of the discovery of a gold cup in a barrow in Cornwall, AD 1837', Archaeological Journal-4, 24 (1867), pp. 189-95
• C.F.C. Hawkes, 'The Rillaton gold cup', Antiquity-4, 57 (1983), pp. 124-25