What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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Summary: 1 miniature (incense) cup with straight sides perforated twice in one side and decorated with diagonal lines around a flared rim, 2 bands of zigzags around the neck and one band of straight vertical lines below the waist, each bordered by incised lines, found with a primary cremation in tree-trunk coffin in bell barrow Milton Lilbourne G4, excavated by P. Ashbee in 1959.
A miniature vessel excavated with a primary cremation in bell barrow Milton Lilbourne G4, excavated by Paul Ashbee in 1959. The vessel and cremation were deposited within a coffin made of a hollowed out tree trunk.
This vessel was re-examined by Copper (2017) as part of their Mphil with the University of Bradford, which covered all of the Early Bronze Age miniature vessels in Southern Britain. They divide the corpus into four groups: miniature, bi-conical, simple, and elaborate, and argue that most are derivations of late beaker and early food vessel imitations. Investigating the contexts of these vessels, they found that most were associated with primary cremations in round barrows, with no clear correlation with either age or sex – although noting that there was only limited evidence for the latter.
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Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!