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The Hoxne Late Roman Treasure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Catherine Johns and
Roger Bland
Catherine Johns
Affiliation:
The British Museum
Roger Bland
Affiliation:
The British Museum
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Extract

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 Coroner's Inquest in Lowestoft on 3 September 1993.

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Articles
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Britannia , Volume 25 , November 1994, pp. 165 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Catherine Johns and Roger Bland 1994. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 We would like to thank the finder, Eric Lawes, the farmer of the land where the treasure was found, Peter Whatling, and the landowners, Suffolk County Council; Judith Plouviez, John Newman, and all those from the Suffolk Archaeological Unit who took part in the excavation; the coroner, George de Lacroix; Kenneth Painter and many colleagues at the British Museum, especially Andrew Burnett, Michael Cowell, Simon Dove, Celestine Enderly, Richard Hobbs, Duncan Hook, Janet Lang, Andrew Oddy, Tim Potter, Ray Waters, and Jonathan Williams. Apart from reports in newspapers, the principal references are Johns, Catherine and Bland, Roger, ‘The great Hoxne treasure: a preliminary report’, JRA vi (1993), 493–6, and Roger Bland and Catherine Johns, The Hoxne Treasure; An Illustrated Introduction (1993).Google Scholar

2 This number includes a further four gold solidi and 81 silver siliquae which were discovered in September 1993, after the field had been ploughed again.

3 Lists of these hoards are given by Carson, R.A.G., ‘Gold and silver coin hoards and the end of Roman Britain’, British Museum Yearbook 1 (1978), 67–82Google Scholar; Archer, S., ‘Late Roman gold and silver coin hoards in Britain: a gazetteer’, in Casey, P.J. (ed.). The End of Roman Britain, BAR 71 (1979), 29–64Google Scholar and King, C.E., ‘Late Roman silver hoards in Britain and the problem of clipped siliquae’, British Num. Journ. li (1981), 5–31. Over 20 new hoards have come to light since Archer's and King's lists were published: these are mostly published in the Coin Hoards from Roman Britain series. The distribution pattern of late-Roman gold and silver hoards in Britain shows that they were nearly all buried in the lowland zone, that is, south and east of the Severn-Humber line, with a small scattering along the north-eastern coast, while Wales and the North-West are almost totally empty (see the distribution map in Archer, op. cit., 30).Google Scholar

4 Num. Chron. (1936), 314-16.

5 For Romania see Duncan, G.L., Coin Circulation in the Danubian and Balkan Provinces of the Roman Empire, A.D. 294-578, Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication 26 (1993), 107–39.Google Scholar

6 For an inventory of hoards of gold coins of this period see P. Grierson and M. Mays, Catalogue of Late Roman Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection (1992), 278-95.

7 Num. Chron. (1891), Proceedings, 10.

8 There is one example of each of nos 246 and 247 in Bastien, P., Le monnayage de l'atelier de Lyon du règne de Jovien à la mort de Jovin (363–413) (1987), 249.Google Scholar

9 See, for example, the list of such finds by S.E. Rigold, ‘The Sutton Hoo coins in the light of the contemporary background of coinage in England’, in R. Bruce-Mitford (ed.), The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial (1975), 653-77.

10 J.W.E. Pearce, ‘Notes on the Terling and other silver hoards found in Britain’, Num. Chron. (1933), 179-81.

11 Terling: Num. Chron. (1933), 145-70; St Pancras: Num. Chron. (1959), 15; Coleraine: Num. Chron. (1855), 101-15.

12 Burnett, A.M., ‘Clipped siliquae and the end of Roman Britain’, Britannia xv (1984), 163–8, at 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 For the date of these solidi see J.P.C. Kent, Roman Imperial Coinage X, forthcoming.

14 Reece, R., ‘Summary of the Roman coins from Richborough,’ in Cunliffe, B.W. (ed.), Richborough V, Rep. Res. Comm. Soc. Antiqs. xxiii (1968), 207.Google Scholar

15 Gough's Camden (1789), II, 30f.

16 Num. Chron. (1855), 101-15 and Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy lxxiii (1973), 42–3.Google Scholar

17 J.P.C. Kent, ‘From Roman Britain to Saxon England,’ in R.H.M. Dolley (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Coins (1961), 1-22 and idem, ‘The end of Roman Britain: the literary and numismatic evidence reviewed,’ in P.J. Casey (ed.), The End of Roman Britain, BAR 71 (1979), 15-27.

18 Burnett, op. cit. (note 12).

19 King, op. cit. (note 3).

20 See also Casey, P.J., ‘Coin evidence and the end of Roman Wales’, Arch. Journ. cxlvi (1989), 320–9.Google Scholar

21 For the large body-chain from Egypt, made up of pierced gold discs (British Museum registration no. MLA 1916.7-4.1.), see J.P.C. Kent and K.S. Painter (eds), Wealth of the Roman World (1977), no. 163.

22 The Thetford ring with a square setting is described in Catherine Johns and Timothy Potter, The Thetford Treasure (1983), no. 15; the example from the Canterbury treasure is discussed in Johns, Catherine and Potter, T.W., ‘The Canterbury late Roman treasure’, Antiq. Journ. lxv (1985), 326, no. 19.Google Scholar

23 Catherine Johns and Timothy Potter, The Thetford Treasure (1983), nos 24 and 25. The classic occurence of this type is in the Lyon hoard, A. Comarmond, Description de I'Ecrin d'une dame romaine trouvé à Lyon en 1841 (1844), pl. 2, 3 and 4, but the Lyon and Thetford bracelets have wider corrugations than the set from Hoxne.

24 For the Conceşti amphora, see P.E. Arias, ‘L'anfora argentea di Conceşti’, in H.-V. Cain et al. (eds), Festschrift für Nikolaus Himmelmann (1989), 473-9. For the example in the Sevso treasure, see Mango, Madia, ‘Der Seuso Schatzfund’, Antike Welt xxi (1990), 70 (cat. no. 9).Google Scholar

25 A.O. Curie, The Treasure of Traprain (1923), 79, pl. XXXI, no. 123.

26 The type is described and discussed by Andrew Oliver in the catalogue entry for the Boston piperatorium in his Silver for the Gods (1977), no. 102.

27 See, for example, K. Weitzmann (ed.). Age of Spirituality (1979), no. 327; H. Beck and P.C. Bol (eds), Spätantike und frühes Christentum (1983), nos 65-6. No. 64 in this catalogue is also of particular interest as it is a very similar female bust in silver, interpreted as a furniture-mount. Also relevant is the gold brooch in the Ténès treasure, deposited in the early fifth century, which bears a portrait of a woman with the same hairstyle (J. Heurgon, Le Trésor de Ténès (1958), 63).

28 K.S. Painter, The Water Newton Early Christian Silver (1977), no. 5.

29 The term cochlear and ligula both encompass a range of shapes which evolved from the early Empire to late-Antique times. The recent assertion by Harald Mielsch (‘Der antike Name der Löffel mit Schwanenhalsgriff’, Arch. Anzeiger (1992), 475) that the late-Roman ligulae with swan- or duck-headed curved or coiled handles were known as cigni is welcome as it provides a more precise name for a distinctive late type.

30 The incomplete ibis-headed toothpick in the Kaiseraugst treasure may be like the Hoxne pair, though in the catalogue it was restored to match the only known parallel at the time, a single example from St. Éanne (Deux-Sèvres, France); Max Martin in Herbert Cahn and Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann (eds), Der spätrömische Silberschatz von Kaiseraugst (1984), 122, no. 40 (Abb. 70).

31 Two examples of socketed toilet implements occur in the so-called Desana treasure; V. Bierbrauer, Die Ostgotischen Grab- und Schatzfunde in Italien (1975), 269, Taf. XI, 3.