Citation: Oliveira, C.; Vilaça, R.; Pereira, A.L.; Vitale, A.L. Unveiling the Use of Wide Horizontal Rim Vessels (Bronze Age Northwest Iberian Peninsula). Separations 2022, 9, 366. https://doi.org/10.3390/ separations9110366 Academic Editor: Petr Bednar Received: 17 October 2022 Accepted: 7 November 2022 Published: 10 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). separations Article Unveiling the Use of Wide Horizontal Rim Vessels (Bronze Age Northwest Iberian Peninsula) César Oliveira 1, * , Raquel Vilaça 2 , André Lopes Pereira 2 and Anna Lígia Vitale 2 1 Cultural Heritage Laboratory, Studies and Safeguarding (HERCULES), University of Évora, Largo Marquês de Marialva, 8, 7000-809 Évora, Portugal 2 Institute of Archaeology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Centre for Studies in Archaeology, Arts and Heritage Sciences (CEAACP), University of Coimbra, 3004-531 Coimbra, Portugal * Correspondence: cesar.oliveira@uevora.pt Abstract: This paper addresses a “wide horizontal rim vessel” belonging to the collection of Fundação Sousa d’Oliveira (Azores). Although its provenance and the circumstances of its discovery are currently unknown, the authors contend that this vessel should be attributed to the Iberian Northwest and, more specifically, to the Portuguese territory, in line with the highly homogenous distribution of this type of pottery. A morphological and stylistic study has been carried out establishing its singularity with regards to the decorative composition of the rim, which is without parallel amongst dozens of vessels of the same “family”. During the study of this piece, it has been possible to observe traces of soot and organic residues deposited both on its interior and exterior surfaces, which is recurrent in these vessels. The nature of these substances has never been determined in previous studies. In this article, we present and discuss the results obtained from the chromatographic analyses of the organic residue traces found on the vessel. Keywords: wide horizontal rim vessels; organic residue analysis; Bronze Age; iberian northwest; chromatography; Sousa d’Oliveira Foundation 1. Introduction The study of pottery bibliographically established as “wide rim vessel”, or “wide horizontal rim” (WHR) vessel (in Portuguese, “vasos de largo bordo horizontal” or “vasos LBH”), accounts for a notable number of works, published since the beginning of the 20th century [1]. This type of pottery is defined by peculiarities regarding the rim shape and decoration (albeit, not always present), which is why it was identified in early studies as “vases d’une forme spéciale (semblables à des chapeaux), avec des dessins sur les bords” (vases of a special shape (such as hats), with decoration on the edges) [2]. Following the earliest reports, there appeared soon after, a monographic text featuring all of the specimens known at that time, categorized by the author as “inverted hat-shaped vessels” [3]. In the following decades, sporadic findings continued, for the most part in the Minho (Portugal) and in Galicia (Spain), with all the existing information gathered and critically analyzed at the end of the last century in a reference text dedicated to the necropolis of Agra de Antas (Esposende) and its radiocarbon dating [4]. This work also comprehensively elaborates on the diverse contexts of the WHR vessels, funerary (including cists without tumulus, pits, monuments with tumulus) and non-funerary, as well as undetermined cases [4] (pp. 7–13), a question also considered by Bettencourt [5,6] (p. 624). Throughout the 20th century, many different chronologies were attributed to these vases, based on stylistic, decorative and stratigraphic criteria (when known): among others (for a detailed view of the other proposals see Ref. [4] (pp. 13–16)), to the final stages of the Neolithic [2] (p. 66); to the final stages of the Iron Age, due to the findings in the Lusitanian-Roman layer of the settlement of Terroso (Póvoa de Varzim), but allowing for the possibility of a long diachronicity-“... the typical form lasted many centuries” [3] (p. 664); to Separations 2022, 9, 366. https://doi.org/10.3390/separations9110366 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/separations