Catherine Johns

The jewellery of Roman Britain : Celtic and classical traditions

The nature of jewellery and the nature of the evidence the two traditions - Celtic and Graeco-Roman finger-rings gemstones and other settings necklaces and bracelets earrings and hair ornaments brooches the manufacture of Roman jewellery.

The Canterbury Late Roman Treasure

In 1962, an important hoard of Christian late Roman silver was found at Canterbury and declared Treasure Trove. The assemblage, which dates to the end of the fourth century A.D. or the first decade of the fifth, and includes ingots and inscribed spoons, was published in 1965. In 1982, a spoon appeared on the London antiquities market which on investigation proved to be one of five objects (with two stamped ingots and two siliquae) that had formed part of the 1962 discovery, but had not been declared; they were pronounced Treasure Trove in 1983. This paper is an illustrated catalogue and discussion of all the items now known to constitute the Canterbury treasure. Two further sets of late Roman silver spoons are also catalogued, an unprovenanced group in private hands which displays marked links with the Canterbury treasure, and the Dorchester-on-Thames hoard, found in the late nineteenth century and typologically and chronologically closely related to Canterbury. X-ray fluorescence analyses of all the items have been carried out in the British Museum Research Laboratory, and the results are discussed.

The Roman Occupation of The Central Fenland

The purpose of this paper is to draw together the results of a campaign of excavation and field-survey in the March area of the Cambridgeshire Fens. The work was carried out between 1958 and 1964, at a time when the last earthwork sites in the region were coming under the plough. That the excavations were undertaken before the destructive contemporary programme of deep cultivation began is a matter of some importance. Study of the earthwork sites showed that the third- and fourth-century buildings lay only a few inches below the surface and, although often constructed in stone, never possessed more than shallow footings. We may surmise that, unless a well preserved pasture site has escaped attention, deep ploughing has stripped off most traces of late-Roman structures on these Fenland settlements. Only the lower fills of the larger ditches and pits are likely to have survived intact.

A Mid-Fifth Century Hoard of Roman and Pseudo-Roman Material from Patching, West Sussex

From this evidence , it seems probable that they were at least two turnpike lines constructed between 1769 and 1817 from Welshpool to Mallwyd. T e second of these as on a massive scale and, for mucl of the course, on a new line; this may correspond with the 1813 phase at Gelli-goch. This is the road that has been described mistakenly as Roman. Unfortunately the details of the route do not survive west of Dolarddyn because of the lapse of time betwee Ordnance Survey Drawings 198 and 328/332. It was reconstructed between 1817 and 1830, when in several places a new line as taken for the road to obtain easier gradients.

The Risley Park Silver Lanx: A Lost Antiquity from Roman Britain

In 1729, a decorated fourth-century Roman silver dish bearing a Christian inscription was found at Risley Park, Derbyshire. Damaged when found, the fragments of the vessel were soon lost, but an illustrated account of it was published by William Stukeley in 1736. Stukeley and later authorities interpreted the inscription as implying that the dish had belonged to a late Roman church in France, and considered that it had been brought to Britain as loot in the Middle Ages. This paper presents a description and assessment of the Risley Park lanx in the light of the greater knowledge of late Roman silver plate now available, and makes the suggestion that the vessel may have been imported into Britain in the Roman period.

The materials, conservation and remounting of the Hemsworth Venus mosaic

Abstract The Roman mosaic from Hemsworth was excavated in 1908 and brought in sections to the British Museum. The separate sections were restored, reassembled and mounted for display on the north‐east staircase of the Museum, where they remained until 199S. The mosaic was conserved in order that the mosaic could be re‐displayed as an integral part of the Weston Gallery of Roman Britain which was opened in 1997 in the British Museum. It was dismantled, cleaned, much of the old restoration removed, and a new lightweight, inert mounting system applied. The approaches adopted and the particular techniques used are described, and analyses of original and early twentieth‐century restoration materials are presented.

The Hoxne Late Roman Treasure

A major late Roman hoard of coins, gold jewellery and silver table utensils was found in November 1992 at Hoxne, Suffolk. The finder, Eric Lawes, located the treasure on 16 November 1992, and together with the tenant farmer of the land, Peter Whatling, immediately reported the discovery to Suffolk County Council, the landowners. This prompt action enabled a team from the Suffolk Archaeological Unit, under the direction of Judith Plouviez, to carry out a controlled emergency excavation of the remainder of the deposit on 17 November. This was completed on the same day, and the finds were collected and taken to the British Museum on the following day. The deposit was lifted in small context blocks, and the recording and detailed excavation was therefore completed under laboratory conditions in the Museum. The hoard was declared Treasure Trove at a Coroners Inquest in Lowestoft on 3 September 1993.

A Hoard of Late Roman Rings and Silver Coins from Silchester, Hampshire

The rings and coins described below were found in a field adjacent to the presumed Iron Age earthwork in Rampier Copse, immediately to the south-west of the walled town of Calleva Atrebatum and about ioo m south of the road to Sorviodunum (FIG. 1). They were discovered by Mr J. Young and two colleagues using metal detectors after the field had been ploughed in the winter of 1986–7. In the autumn of 1985 a single gold ring (FIG. 2, No. 5) and four silver coins had been recovered from the same area and it was suggested that they had once formed part of a hoard. At the Coroners inquest in December 1987 it was reported that the new finds were widely scattered and it was for this reason that the court decided that they were not treasure-trove. However, given the rarity of single finds of such coins and rings as opposed to the instances where they have been found in association with each other, it would be perverse to suppose that they did not originate from at least one hoard. Indeed, after the discovery had been reported, one of us visited the field in the spring of 1987 and noted that the area of greatest disturbance was confined to a small area adjacent to the field boundary and the tail of the counterscarp bank of the earthwork at SU 63486212 (FIG. 1). It is likely that both sets of finds derive from the same hoard and it is on the assumption of a common origin that the new finds are reported here.

The Hoxne Treasure@@@The Hoxne Treasure. An Illustrated Introduction

Although this booklet was issued so soon after initial cleaning and conservation and immediately after the Hoxne cache was declared Treasure Trove, it bears every sign of the high standards of scholarship which are the hallmark of its two authors. Its publication was an act of faith by the Museum authorities, for at the time it was by no means certain that the entire Treasure could be secured for the nation. Happily this has now been achieved and the work of conservation, study, and publication can now proceed. Some aspects will receive attention sooner than others; Roger Tomlin, for example, has reported on the inscriptions on the spoons and one of the bracelets in the pages of this Journal (Britannia xxv (1994), 306-8). The text, short as it is, makes statements which should be regarded in some instances less as fact than as an invitation to dialogue. The excellent photographs, the majority of them in colour, are far from being a complete record, but in conjunction with experience of the material on display in the British Museum, they too allow others to make suggestions about the find. The Treasure seems to have been contained in a wooden chest. The quantity of coins alone, including 565 gold and 14,191 silver down to the reign of Constantine III, is astonishing as is the gold jewellery and silverware. However the Treasure can only be part of something much larger. The silver vessels were all small ones. Surely there were large plates and bowls like those from Mildenhall in the ministerium? Missing too are pendants from the necklaces, and the rings have certainly had their settings removed. Roger Bland hints that 650 gold coins found at Eye in the eighteenth century about four miles away may have been a related parcel of finds. The assumption is that the original owner was a wealthy aristocrat, perhaps the Aurelius Ursicinus whose name appears on ten of the spoons. It is worth wondering why this and so many other Treasures come from a part of Britain not noted for palatial villas rather than from the Cotswold region or the South-West, though this is not a problem to which it is possible to provide an easy answer (but see below). Even if the original owner was a magnate whose main residence lay elsewhere in the Empire, he would still have required a country-seat appropriate to his status. What were the particular circumstances of the burial of the treasure? Was the Hoxne Treasure hidden by the owner or his steward at a time of unrest or even invasion, perhaps with other material being left elsewhere on the estate or taken away to the continent or to elsewhere in Britain? Is there any chance that the reason for deposition was religious rather than secular, as we believe to have been the case at Thetford (C. Johns and T. Potter, The Thetford Treasure, Roman Jewellery and Silver (1983))? It seems possible that the Thetford Treasure itself contained coins and there were three other hoards in the immediate vicinity. Although the Thetford material was dedicated to the god Faunus, there is a Christian counterpart in the Water Newton Treasure, while St Patrick (Confessio 49) mentions pious women depositing jewellery upon the altar. A serious drawback to any such explanation here is that no associated building has been located.

The Wincle, Cheshire, Hoard of Roman Gold Jewellery

A hoard of Roman gold jewellery found at Wincle, Cheshire, in the 1870s had apparently been lost but re-emerged in 1978. The opportunity has been taken to publish and illustrate the objects in full, and to assess the significance of the hoard which is dated to the third century.