BEAKERS

The almost consistent presence of beakers in the graves containing jet bears relates to the age of the dead children. Beakers in themselves carry no particular religious meaning, but as drinking vessels and containers of liquids they are appropriate for infants and, given the rarity of tettines as site finds, were probably the first ceramic vessel used on a daily basis by most children. The motto BIBE on one of the vessels in Abbey Field C2 F166 is particularly apposite in the context of a parent urging a child to take nourishment.

LUNULAE AND PHALLI

The silver lunulae in Abbey Field C2 F166 and Butt Road G406, and the lunula combined with a phallus in Butt Road G278, are unmistakable protective devices in both apotropaic and chthonic contexts. The horned phallus combines male and female fertility symbols to produce doubly powerful protection against misfortune and evil, and the silver lunulae may also have been doubly effective for they mimic not only the shape of the crescent moon but also its colour.

The crescent moon is an early sky symbol and its use as an amulet can be tracked back to Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium b.c. At first probably used by women as a symbol of and for the menstrual cycle and fertility, like the phallus (see below) it later became a general prophylactic against evil.Footnote ²¹ Used in this way it is well-represented in Roman Britain. Brooches employing the motif are found in the first and second centuries, and lunula pendants are sometimes found as site finds, often associated with military equipment, many pieces of which also incorporated the horned moon into their designs. In the classical pantheon the moon is the emblem of Artemis-Diana, but it is also personified as Luna (Selene), an image that appears, appropriately, on first-century picture lamps. Each of the gold necklaces in the Backworth hoard has a crescent moon pendant as well as a solar wheel symbol, a silver necklace from Newstead also has a wheel and a crescent, and similar silver crescents and wheels were among the items in the Snettisham treasure from Norfolk. Wheels and crescents were also used as votive offerings at sanctuary sites both here and in Roman Gaul. The wheel represents daytime and rebirth; the crescent as a waning moon represents night and death, as a waxing moon regeneration. Lunula amulets appear on pipeclay mother-goddess figurines made in the Rhineland, strengthening their fertility and chthonic aspects, and also on the pipeclay busts of infants or small children, which demonstrates their protective purpose. They were an important feature of a Roman girl's costume, referred to as early as Plautus (c. 254–184 b.c.) and as late as Isidore of Seville (c. a.d. 560–636).Footnote ²²

The phallus as a protective image permeated Roman life, occurring on a wide range of objects from wall plaques to small amulets, lamps to wall paintings. All were ways of averting the evil eye, rather than charms to ensure sexual potency. Young boys in Republican Rome wore phallic amulets to guard them from danger as they grew up, and small gold rings with a phallus on the bezel from London and Faversham must belong to this tradition, as well as a small gold pendant from Braintree.Footnote ²³ Phallic imagery is rather less pervasive in Britain than in Italy, but the association with children remains, and it also frequently occurs on sites connected with the Roman army and on horse-gear that may be either military or civilian.Footnote ²⁴

Fist-and-phallus amulets combine both male and female protective devices, as the fist represents the vulvate symbol of the fig-hand (mano fica) gesture, the thumb protruding between the middle and forefinger. Five copper-alloy fist-and-phallus amulets were buried with an infant at Catterick, perhaps a foundation deposit for a temenos, and another example was found in the same area.Footnote ²⁵ In Butt Road G278 the phallus is integrated with the female symbol of a horned moon, thereby similarly increasing its effectiveness. The combination also occurs on cavalry harness pendants, sometimes again with the mano fica, and one lunula harness pendant from Zugmantel has a suspension ring (part of the original casting) on its outer edge from which has been hung a phallic amulet with central suspension loop. Some phallic amulets with a central suspension loop are crescentic and represent the most economic means of combining both images.Footnote ²⁶ A further example of phallic imagery in G278 may occur on the amber head (see below).

HUMAN HEAD

The amuletic importance of the amber head, which is unique in Roman Britain, must be based on both its material and its form. Pliny notes several facts about amber, of which the most pertinent here are its electro-static properties, which must have appeared quite magical, its high cost, its use for protective amulets for babies, and that, worn on a necklace, it was a remedy for fever.Footnote ²⁷ The rarity of amber objects in Roman Britain would add to the perceived magico-medical properties of the head from Butt Road G278. Henig thought it an Aquileian product of the early Empire that represents an Ethiopian or pygmy, and that its prominent nose may be intended to be phallic. If it is Aquileian it would, like the coins in the grave, be an antique or an heirloom, but it may not be much older than the grave itself. It is undamaged, has no noticeable wear at the perforation, is quite crudely fashioned compared with the high quality of most of the Aquileian assemblage, and so may well be a later piece made in Germany or Gaul. Similar heads of late Roman date occur in jet in Germany and Belgium, one of which, from Coninxheim, is particularly close to the Butt Road piece.Footnote ²⁸

PIERCED CANINE TEETH

Pliny notes that a black dog's tooth could be used as a febrifuge, and that a wolf's tooth helped with teething problems and nightmares in a child. In sympathetic magic this is an example of like to combat like, with a dog worrying a bone matching the restlessness of a feverish patient. Clarke proposed an Anglo-Saxon origin for the Lankhills G450 teeth (and by association for the child), but both Pliny's observations and archaeological finds show that this need not be correct.Footnote ²⁹ Pierced animal teeth are certainly well-attested in Anglo-Saxon contexts, but they also occur much earlier in Britain, for example at Skara Brae and with Late Bronze Age material in the Heathery Burn Cave, while pierced dog/wolf/fox teeth occur in Romano-British contexts dating from the first to the fourth century at, for example, Baldock, Chichester, Witham, Foxton, Aldborough and Castleford, as well as G278 at Colchester.Footnote ³⁰ The Chichester tooth comes from a well-furnished grave and seems to have been part of a bead string. A bear tooth found in a cabinet at Pompeii highlights the medicinal use of animal teeth, and dog, bear and lion tooth pendants have been found at Augst. Ross has suggested, with particular reference to a pierced bear's canine from Chesters, Northumberland, that they may also have been used as hunting charms, but this is not appropriate in the context of infant burials.Footnote ³¹

Most pierced teeth are perforated at one end, but those from Lankhills and Castleford have the hole in the centre and so, when suspended, their curved shape would be emphasised. This may be a deliberate attempt to stress the dog's underworld associations by reference to the crescent moon (see ‘Lunulae’ above). The dog in Romano-Celtic religion has a chthonic aspect as the guide and guardian of the soul on its journey between life and death, often being associated with the three Mothers, the horse-goddess Epona, Sequana and Sucellus, as well as with healing deities such as Apollo, Nodens and Asclepius.Footnote ³² In addition, the path to the underworld was guarded by the triple-headed Cerberus, and the association is further stressed by a figurine of a wolf-god devouring a man found near Oxford. Dogs have sometimes been killed and placed in graves to accompany children to the afterlife, or a model dog might be used instead. At Lankhills one dog was buried on an empty coffin and a second had been dismembered, its backbone tied to form a circle, then added to the grave fill.Footnote ³³ Dogs were not only used as funerary deposits but were also sacrificed, singly or in groups, and placed in shafts, pits and wells as dedicatory offerings or closure offerings; in Britain this practice predates the Roman period. Some infants accompanied by dogs were buried in shafts, blurring the division between funerary and dedicatory. The intercessory role of the animal can also be seen in the deposition of dog-shaped bone amulets at the sanctuary of Sequana at the sources of the Seine.Footnote ³⁴

The tooth amulets in the infant graves at Lankhills and Butt Road may be examples of local magic using similar beliefs to that of Pliny's febrifuge, and they may also be representative of the dog as the companion of healing deities, many of whom also had power in the underworld. The dual aspect of the dog companion implies that the amulets were used prophylactically during the last illness of the children at Lankhills and Colchester, and then to represent a protective canine guide on their journey to the afterlife.

BELLS AND OTHER NOISE-MAKING OBJECTS

Making noise was used in the ancient world to drive away evil, as seen in the use of cymbals, rattles and crotales during the worship of Isis and Bacchus, and of mobile charms (tintinnabuli) in domestic houses, the latter combining bells with other apotropaic images, such as phalli. Ovid described the priests of Cybele in religious procession playing flutes, beating on drums and striking cymbal against cymbal to produce tinkling sounds (tinnitus). One plate from a large pair of cymbals, 180 mm across, was found in the Temple of Cybele at Neuss (Nordrhein-Westfalen), a pair only 110 mm across at Pompeii, and two small finger cymbals, only 45 mm across, from the burial of a juvenile at Colchester; the latter may have been the type meant by Ovid.Footnote ³⁵

The use of bells as protective devices was widespread. Like the lunula and phallus they occur on both military and civilian horse-trappings, together with jangles of various forms.Footnote ³⁶ Fifty-eight small bells used as votive deposits were found in the sanctuary at Les Bolards, Nuits-Saint-Georges (Côte d'Or), and bells with a melon bead fixed inside were buried as threshold foundation deposits in buildings in Colchester and Scole, Norfolk.Footnote ³⁷ In several instances bells have been found with the graves of children. In the Roman catacombs they were set into the mortar sealing children's tombs, a protective device which appears to be particularly common in the fourth century but must have originated much earlier, as a small bell was found with the cremation of a perinatal infant dated to the late first or early second century in the cemetery at Valladas, St-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (Drôme).Footnote ³⁸

The bell in Butt Road Grave 278 undoubtedly served the same purpose. The pair of bells on the iron chain in Grave 94 and the bell on an armlet in Grave 1 (Appendix 2) can be seen in the same light. In a wider sense the copper-alloy disc on the armlet in Butt Road Grave 503, all the pierced and suspended coins, the pendant amulets, beads and finger-rings may all have doubled as noise-making devices. Some, such as the amber head and the ceramic face mask in the Trier grave (Table 1), fall into the class of objects known as crepundia, amuletic miniatures or curiosities that were collected and highly prized by young girls. They were often strung together or stored in a small box and would have made interesting noises when shaken or rolled around, with varying actions altering the quality of the sound. As crepundia comes from crepare, to rattle or clatter, using them in this way must have been an integral part of both their charm and their effectiveness.Footnote ³⁹

BEADS AND FINGER-RINGS

Both object types are more readily categorised as jewellery than amulets, but in the context of these graves they add yet further weight to the mass of protective deposited material. Given the careful selection of other items in both Group 1 and Group 2 graves, similar attention was surely given to the choice of beads. The amber used for the human head and the silver used for the lunulae add to their apotropaic impact, but substances like amber and jet would have been effective just as beads, and coloured glass beads, through their similarity to gemstones, may also have been credited with medicinal and amuletic properties. Pliny notes that jet cured tooth-ache and had a beneficial effect upon scrofula when combined with wax; its fumes could alleviate hysterics, detect epilepsy and could be used to test virginity. Solinus observed that like amber it was electrostatic. A large jet bead from the grave of a British healer at Stanway was probably both professional equipment and dress accessory.Footnote ⁴⁰

Cool considers that in north Britain in the late Roman period certain materials or colours seemed to take on increasing importance, with white/cream bone and ivory bracelets, red ceramic counters and spindlewhorls, and black glass, jet, or shale finger-rings occurring regularly in contexts dating to the late Roman transition; Allason-Jones suggests that in the very late fourth and early fifth centuries black glass was credited with the same powers as jet.Footnote ⁴¹ The occurrence of bone, silver, jet and carnelian in Abbey Field C2 F166 supports the former and Table 2 supports the latter, with black glass occurring in some graves at Butt Road and black mineral (jet and/or shale) in others. Green glass beads could be used as subsitutes for emeralds, so might yellow glass have been a substitute for amber, credited with the same powers?Footnote ⁴² Both are rare in late Roman contexts, offering little chance for a similar pattern to emerge, and both occur in Butt Road Grave 406.

TABLE 2.

MATERIAL OF GRAVE GOODS FROM GROUP 2 GRAVES AT BUTT ROAD, COLCHESTER

When more than one glass bead was placed in the Butt Road graves they were invariably of more than one colour. The colours may have been important individually, or perhaps in combination. Among the coloured gemstones, Pliny mentions that malachite (green) was believed to protect children and was a prophylactic against danger, and that in the East ‘everybody’ wore a green stone as an amulet. He dismisses the claim of quack magicians that amethysts inscribed with the names of the sun and moon and worn round the neck with baboon hairs and swallow feathers were a protection against spells.Footnote ⁴³ Colours were also seen as significant in a more general sense, such as imperial purple. Tacitus thought it better for an orator to wear a rough (shaggy/woollen) toga rather than colourful clothing, which was associated with prostitutes (‘vel hirta toga induere quam fucatis et meretriciis vestibus insignire’). Mourners and those awaiting trial wore dull colours such as black, brown, grey or cream, while the colours appropriate for the clothing of Christian women were subject to debate, as was the use of coloured cosmetics. In the first century a.d. the colour purple used for the stripe on the toga praetexta worn by both boys and girls in Rome was described as protective by Persius, who defined it as a guardian (custos) of the young.Footnote ⁴⁴

The recognition of the importance of colour in the Roman world is not proof that all beads of coloured glass in late Roman Britain were regarded as significant or credited with beneficial powers. Nevertheless, there are examples in other cultures in other periods that enhance the possibility. In Late Bronze Age Mesopotamia coloured glass was believed to have the same amuletic properties as the stone it matched in hue, and glass bead necklaces had both protective and curative powers.Footnote ⁴⁵ In modern Sarawak beads of various types are still worn for protection or to strengthen the soul of an individual or community; in the nineteenth century beads were tied to the left wrist of corpses, varying according to the age and rank of the individual, to ensure admittance to the land of the dead.Footnote ⁴⁶ Most pertinently for late Roman Britain, Meaney has demonstrated that glass beads in Migration Period Europe could be credited with magical properties, and in this light the multi-coloured bead accompanying the bell amulet on the armlet in Butt Road G1 is probably an example of the apotropaic or prophylactic use of coloured glass.Footnote ⁴⁷

An intention of including a wide range of materials in a grave is apparent where finger-rings were among the deposits (see ‘Materials’ below). None are of copper alloy, the commonest material used for rings in the late Roman period. There was one of iron on the bead string in Butt Road G503, which was probably antique when buried. It may have been an heirloom, but is more likely to represent the inclusion of a protective piece of iron. Using a piece of iron to draw a circle around both infants and adults was believed to ward off noxious influences, while rust and small fragments of iron were added to ointments and other medicines used to treat a variety of ailments.Footnote ⁴⁸ One finger-ring in Abbey Field C2 F166 was of ivory and the other of silver with a carnelian intaglio of a stag. The animal is associated with Artemis-Diana, a link emphasised by the use of silver, and the ring may have been used to invoke her. As the Greek Artemis is also closely associated with bears, the intaglio may be a second reference to her cult in this grave (see ‘Discussion’).

BEARS

Of the nine jet bears found in Britain and Germany, seven come from burials. That in itself could be taken as sufficient evidence that their significance is funerary, but they do not exist in isolation. Pipeclay bear figurines have been found in cemeteries on the Continent, the most striking being one from Brescia, Italy, that shows the animal sitting on its haunches and holding a lamp aloft, an image that undoubtedly represents the animal as both a guide and a companion (fig. 11). A bear may accompany an enigmatic male figurine found in an infant burial from Arrington, Cambs., but the identification of the animal is very tentative (see below). Further funerary associations are provided by Late Iron Age graves in Gaul containing bear teeth, and by other continental and British first-century b.c. and first-century a.d. graves containing bear claws, sometimes all that remained of whole skins. Indeed, the practice of depositing bear claw and tooth amulets in graves developed much earlier in the prehistoric period.Footnote ⁴⁹

FIG. 11.

Ceramic bear with lamp, from Brescia, north Italy. Scale 1:2. (After Bezzi Martini 1987)

As the most powerful mammal of northern Europe and the Mediterranean region, the brown bear (Ursus arctos) may, like the carnivorous lion, have represented all-devouring death, but it can be seen as more benign in character than the lion, particularly as it is the animal's passion for fruit that figures strongly in Roman iconography. A mosaic from Trier shows a bear raiding an orchard and a relief from the town shows a bear eating a pile of apples. The latter scene also occurs on a mosaic from Ostia and was used for one of the jet bears from Colchester.Footnote ⁵⁰

Two Gaulish local deities are linked to the bear (artos): Mercury Artaios is recorded at Beaucroissant, Isère, and the goddess Artio in the Rhine-Moselle area. Artio is a local goddess of both agriculture and the forest. Found at Muri, near Berne, a bronze figure scene shows her seated, wearing a diadem and with a basket of fruit on a pedestal beside her, while a bear approaches from beneath a tree (fig. 12); an inscription on the base reads ‘Deae Artioni Licinia Sabinilla’. Her basket of fruit is not only a representation of plenty and the bear's favourite food, but through fertility it also links her to Mother Goddess figures, suggesting that as her companion the bear may parallel the dog in its aspect of a guide to the underworld. The diademed face-mask placed in the Trier grave with a jet bear may represent her image. Artio is also represented by an inscription ‘Artioni Biber’ on a rock near Ernzen, Luxembourg, although Ternes has suggested that this may be related to Gaulish art (rock), rather than artos.Footnote ⁵¹ Mercury Artaios, from his name and from the location of Beaucroissant in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, on the edge of the Alps and in an area that is still wooded today, must have been a conflation of the Roman Mercury with a local god of forests and forest animals, perhaps, like Artio, with a link to agriculture.Footnote ⁵² Both Artio and Artaios are found in areas where agricultural fields meet the forest and so interaction between the inhabitants of the two environments would have been inevitable. The raids of bears on orchards and even beehives must have been part of the seasonal cycle, and hunters, charcoal-burners and timber workers, among others, ventured into the natural habitat of the bear. There was a clear need to invoke the aid of a deity linked to the animal in order to ward off its depredations. Like his female counterpart, Artaios may also have had a chthonic aspect, as one of the roles of Mercury was to escort the souls of the dead (for a bear cub figurine from Cologne found with two animal companions of Mercury see Appendix 1).

FIG. 12.

Dea Artio figure group from Muri, Switzerland. (Image © Historisches Museum Bern (BHM); photograph S. Rebsamen)

Another deity that is sometimes depicted with a bear is Silvanus, a rustic god of Italian origin who had a wide-ranging triple aspect as Agrestis, Domesticus and Orientalis, effectively covering all aspects of rural domestic life — the cultivated fields, the home, and the boundaries of property. As his name suggests he was forest-dwelling and therefore venerated by those who exploited the resources of the forest, including hunters; in this he was often linked to Diana.Footnote ⁵³ He was venerated in the Rhineland by ursarii, military bear hunters picked from within the legions to supply the amphitheatres with the beasts and given quotas to fulfil within specific periods. He is shown on a votive plinth (preserved as casts at both Xanten and Bonn) set up by Cessorinus Ammausius, ursarius of legio XXX Ulpia Victrix, with a bear standing at his side eating fruit, the motif already noted at Trier, Ostia and Colchester. A group of ursarii set up an inscription at Zurich to both Silvanus and Diana, and a bear trap found in the fort at Zugmantel implies the presence of another ursarius there.Footnote ⁵⁴

Sometimes bears were used as executioners rather than victims. Writing in the reign of Titus (a.d. 79–81), Martial describes Caledonian bears being used to dispatch criminals dressed and posed as mythological figures in set-piece arena executions, and a Gaulish ceramic figurine that shows a bound female captive seated on a bull and under attack from a small bear crouched on the bull's shoulders may depict such a scene.Footnote ⁵⁵ Martial's use of ‘Caledonia’ implies that British bears were among the resources of the new province tapped by Rome, but he may have chosen the word as a metaphor rather than as an accurate record of the animal's origin. By naming a source from beyond Empire, the civilised world, he emphasised the wildness and savagery of the animals. Once Britannia was brought within the Empire, Caledonia became the epitome of the shadowy lands on its margins, its name lending to the bears of the arena a far different aspect from that of the almost domestic creature gently approaching Artio's basket of fruit.

Ross described the bear as a divine animal in Celtic religion and offered Matunus, named in an inscription from High Rochester, Northumberland, as a possible northern British bear god, arguing an etymological connection to another Gaulish word for bear, matus. She proposed that the jet bears from York and Malton were linked to his worship, but she was not aware of those from southern Britain and without more substantial supporting evidence her interpretation of Matunus remains very uncertain.Footnote ⁵⁶

Two external observations hint that the bear had symbolic importance to the inhabitants of Britain in the Late Iron Age and Roman periods. First, the country was described by Diodorus Siculus, c. 30 b.c., as ‘very cold, as would be expected for a region lying under the Bear itself’, a reference to Ursa Major, which can be used as a general north point because it appears to revolve around Polaris, the North Star. This description is probably simply a conventional metaphor for ‘in the north’, just as septentriones (the seven plough-oxen) was not only the name for the seven stars that make up the Plough, the most easily recognised element of Ursa Major, but was also used as a metonym for the north or the north wind. As Diodorus was writing from a southern perspective, some evidence from Britain itself would be needed to substantiate the idea that its inhabitants regarded themselves as particularly associated with the Great Bear.Footnote ⁵⁷ Second, in the late fourth century a.d. the poet Claudian's description of the personification of Britannia has her clothed in the pelt of a Caledonian beast, almost certainly intended to mean that of a bear:

Although this image is undoubtedly a formulaic description that was informed by a long poetic tradition, Britannia's animal fur clothing, like her tattooed cheeks and sea-girt coast (the sky-blue cloak), were no doubt perceived as accurate. Comparison with the accuracy of the descriptions of Spain, Gaul, Italy and Africa shows that the image of Britain was informed by reality, however archaic. Within the literary memory of Rome it was understood that Britons wore furs, although, like Martial, Claudian has made the practice seem even more barbaric by giving the source of the pelt as Caledonia, beyond Empire, with its hint of the savagery of the wild beasts of the amphitheatre.Footnote ⁵⁹

Giving some credibility to the image drawn by Claudian are bearskins, represented by only the phalanges, found among the grave goods in the rich burial at Welwyn Garden City, dated to c. 10 b.c., and a well-furnished cremation at The Tene, Baldock, dated to the first half of the first century b.c. In these contexts both skins were clearly luxury items belonging to people of wealth and high status. Schönfelder has suggested that the use of bearskins was an indication of Germanic influence, but it is more appropriate to see them as part of a very much wider northern tradition, provoked by the harsh climate.Footnote ⁶⁰ There is no reason to see them as specifically British.

The iconographic evidence for bears in Roman Britain is quite limited. They appear on some figured pottery, a few small objects such as the South Shields cameo, and are sometimes represented among the beasts on Orphean mosaics. Many of these items are imported, making images of bears on British-made objects quite rare, although the figured pottery includes British colour-coat vessels with venatio scenes. Had a bear-god or goddess been prominent among the cults of Roman Britain we might expect to see rather more bear images, in particular among the wide range of plate brooches and metal figurines from the province, but this is not the case.Footnote ⁶¹

The number of bear bones found in Britain is very small and they are generally described as coming from performing animals or victims of bear-baiting.Footnote ⁶² This limited archaeological evidence implies either that the animals were not generally hunted here for their meat, pelts and the medicinal properties attributed to their fat,Footnote ⁶³ or that they were largely confined to remote forests, or that the overwhelming majority of captured animals were exported. An altar from the fort at Birdoswald dedicated to Silvanus is tantalisingly similar to the stones set up by ursarii in the Rhineland, having been erected by the venatores of Banna (probably Bewcastle). Bears caught either south or north of the Wall were probably destined for export, and documentary evidence suggests that few were used in provincial amphitheatres, most being destined for Rome. There, hundreds of bears could be slaughtered in a day, with Commodus personally accounting for the equivalent of a single hunter's annual quota in a few hours.Footnote ⁶⁴

Against this generally thin background, the jet bears stand out prominently as a group of funerary artefacts, the coherence of their contexts inviting interpretation of the animal as a protective guardian for the dead children with whom they were buried. That they were amulets rather than toys is demonstrated by their contexts, particularly by the recovery of the pair from Abbey Field AF25, Colchester, in situ among threaded beads, and by their size. They range in length from 11 mm to 38 mm, with the degree of detail increasing accordingly, but the smallest captures the physical characteristics of the animal as effectively as the largest. The mother-goddess guardian of infants symbolized by the bears need not necessarily be the Rhine-Moselle Artio. The existence of an unnamed British bear-goddess can be inferred; she may be entirely indigenous, or an introduction derived from Artio or from a more distant source. A source distant in both time and place is readily provided by the cultic practices associated with Artemis, who from the Classical to Roman periods in Attica was associated with bears, bear-priestesses, bear-children, bear-guardians, and childbirth. The possible links between Artemis, Artio and the goddess represented by the jet bears are developed below in the Discussion.

COINS

Interpretations are offered below for the coins in individual graves and the replication of iconography between burials is defined. Not only could the female deities and personifications represented here have been selected for their attributes, but when viewed as a group they seem to have been chosen more as representations of a generic rather than a specific mother (fig. 13, Group A). Similarly, the male images are martial, but seem to have been chosen not as representations of any one warrior-god but as generic representatives of masculine protection (fig. 13, Group B). Together the two groups act as substitute parents for the dead children. Minerva shown as a warrior overlaps both groups. In some cases the reverses in Groups A and B hint at resurrection, Cybele most particularly, and in the mid- to late fourth century when the pairing of male and female images disappears, the martial reverses persist and are joined by images more strongly resonant of resurrection and rebirth (fig. 13, Group C). Here the emperor carrying a labarum with a chi-rho overlaps two groups. The reverse images and other data are summarised in Table 3.

FIG. 13.

Coin reverses in Group 1 and Group 2 graves. Group A, female/maternal figures; Group B, male/martial figures; Group C, rebirth/resurrection images.

TABLE 3.

COINS IN INFANT GRAVES AT COLCHESTER AND LANKHILLS, WINCHESTER

MATERIALS

The importance of material in the selection of grave goods is shown in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 shows the consistent presence of electrostatic jet jewellery or of jet-imitative black mineral jewellery in all the Group 1 graves — apart from Abbey Field C2 F166, which instead has a jet bear and is closer in general material character to the Group 2 graves — whilst Table 2 shows the range of materials present in some of the Group 2 graves. There appears to have been a deliberate intention in several of the Group 2 graves to include iron, and in some to include silver (or silver- or tin-plating). Butt Road Grave 278 in Group 2 has the widest range of materials, but evidence of attempts to maximise the materials present can also be seen in other graves cited above and in Appendix 2: the use of iron for the chain in Grave 94; copper alloy, iron and white metal for the armlet in Grave 15; and the white-metal plating on one strand of the copper-alloy armlet in Grave 1, as well as the iron clapper on the attached bell. The same can be said of the iron finger-ring, plain copper-alloy disc, and perhaps also the coin of Diadumenian with the jet beads in Grave 503; the silver lunula pendant in Grave 406; and the silver and bone finger-rings in Abbey Field C2 F166.

A particularly unusual object from an infant burial found during excavations in the 1960s at Verulam Hills Field, St Albans, Herts., is pertinent here. The child was buried in a lead-lined coffin with a small group of crepundia that included two imported murex shells and a now amorphous lead object interpreted by the excavator as a phallic amulet, all contained in a wooden box placed at the foot of the body. Placed between the left arm and the body was a hollow iron rod on which were set hexagonal beads of shale and bone, producing a banded effect. This eye-catching object may have been a rattle; it was certainly too complex to be a spindle or distaff as the excavator suggested. It may have been a prophylactic that deliberately incorporated contrasting colours and substances, but is more likely to be an example of apotropaic magic.Footnote ⁷⁶

Pauli has defined the amulets from prehistoric graves in the northern Alpine region into groups that taken together represent the full range of apotropaic equipment: first, noise-making objects; second, objects of meaningful shape; third, objects with special external qualities; fourth, curiosities and remarkable objects; and fifth, objects made of a material valued for special properties.Footnote ⁷⁷ In the context of his analysis, the gathering together of a range of materials in the Romano-British burials would work towards building up an effective apotropaic collection of grave deposits and items from the graves can easily be assigned to one or more of his groups. Bells are the most obvious examples of the first category, but any suspended item may clatter against its neighbours. Objects of meaningful shape would include the lunulae, the phalli, the canine tooth, the human head, and the bears. Reflective, light-absorbing and coloured objects all class as having special external qualities, and this would include all items of silver, burnished copper alloy, jet, glass, and amber; the unusual rod from Verulam Hills Field also belongs here, with the combination of contrasting colours being particularly powerful. The human head must rank as a curiosity and the bears as both curiosities and remarkable objects, as would the shells and rod from Verulam Hills Field. The electrostatic properties of both jet and amber place the bears and much of the jewellery into the fifth group, and iron also had protective qualities. As with several of the objects, coins fit into several groups: when suspended they make noise; they can be classed as solar symbols or moon symbols by virtue of their colour and shape; they may reflect light; and, in a fourth-century milieu where coin reverses show little variation, the images on the surfaces of antique coins make them both remarkable and curious.

The significance of the objects in these graves therefore relies upon material as well as upon shape, properties and symbolic purpose. The various colours and properties of the surfaces would all have contributed both singly and together towards the efficacy of the amulets — and this should include the jewellery of all materials — in providing protection for the dead children.

POSITION

The importance of the position of objects in graves can be seen in the frequent occurrence of coins — used as the ferryman's fee — in the mouth or on the eye, or close to the right hand. They were placed where the dead person could easily find them, or where Charon could easily find and take them for himself. The physical form of the body remained important after death.

A remarkable use of coin reverse imagery relative to body position occurs in Lankhills Grave 336, a well-furnished older child's grave (see Appendix 2). The burial was dated to a.d. 350–370 and most of the six coins in the burial were probably still in circulation at that time, apart perhaps from a follis of Constantine I. They had clearly been selected as three pairs and deliberately placed in a protective pattern. Two coins were by the child's right hand, two in the left hand, and two to the left of the feet (fig. 14).Footnote ⁷⁸ The two in the left hand were a true pair, with only the mint marks differing; both are in the Fel Temp Reparatio series of Constantius II, with the reverse of Virtus spearing a falling horseman (FIG. 13, 14). The design has, beyond its political message, a protective-aggressive interpretation linked to the rider image seen in Butt Road G278. The coins by the right hand are both of Magnentius, one with the reverse Victoriae DD NN Aug et Cae showing two Victories standing facing each other and holding a shield, the other with Salus DD NN Aug et Cae showing a chi-rho flanked by alpha and omega (FIG. 13, 17–18). One of the two by the feet was of Constantine II, with the reverse of Gloria Exercitus with two soldiers and two standards between them (FIG. 13, 13), the other was of Constantine I, reverse Soli Invicto Comiti, a type which was also used in the York jet bear burial (FIG. 13, 15). The three pairs can be interpreted as martial (physical, practical) protection in the left hand; religious (spiritual, otherworldly) protection on the right; and both forms of protection at the feet, with the invincible Sol as a symbol of the triumph of day over night, light over dark, life over death. That the pair on the left were clasped in the hand rather than placed beside it lays emphasis upon them, matched by the position of other items in these burials, such as the coin in Lankhills Grave 370, the pierced canines in Lankhills Grave 450, the black mineral armlets in Butt Road G503, and the bead/pendant collections in Butt Road G503 and G15.

FIG. 14.

Grave 336, Lankhills, Winchester. (After Clarke 1979)

The consistent placing of coins with the reverse upwards in the Group 1 Colchester burials emphasises the importance of the reverse images in a funerary context and also the level of detail pursued by the mourning families. The careful placement is paralleled by pipeclay figurines in some second-century infant burials at Argentomarus (Argenton-sur-Creuse, France), which stresses their use as beneficial guardians. In one neonatal burial two Venus figurines, a nursing Mother Goddess and two horses were placed in a circle around the burial urn towards the top of the grave pit, and in the tile-lined inhumation of a weaning infant two Venus figurines were placed so that they flanked the infant's head. The lesser importance of physical nourishment is shown by a tettine placed by the right foot in this burial.Footnote ⁷⁹

It is significant that many of the coins and other items in the graves described here were in or close to the left hand, on the left arm, or close to the left side. Another, more unusual, amuletic item placed in the left hand is the pierced pebble held by the person buried beneath the temple-mausoleum at Lullingstone, Kent.Footnote ⁸⁰ In late Roman Britain the left, sinister, side seems to have been perceived in death as most vulnerable to attack by malign influences, and the side most requiring the protective power of amulets or materials credited with beneficial qualities.Footnote ⁸¹ In a protective sense this is demonstrated by the positions of the coins in Lankhills Grave 336, for the only ones held by the child were the pair with martial reverse type in the left hand. This may be matched by the martial reverse of the coin in the left hand of Lankhills infant Grave 370.

DELIBERATE SELECTION OF COIN REVERSES

Coins in graves are usually interpreted as ferryman's fees and are customarily placed in the mouth, on the eyes, or in or near the right hand, a pattern of deposition common to both child and adult burials at Lankhills (Table 4) and elsewhere.Footnote ⁸² At Lankhills other positions are quite rare, while some multiple deposits imply that a single coin might be perceived as inadequate. Only two graves of infants of one year or younger at Lankhills contained coins, but although only six out of over 700 burials in the Butt Road cemetery contained coins, four of those six were of infants and the coins themselves were either pierced or provided with an alternative method of suspension (Table 3). Many of the coins in the Butt Road infant graves were antique, while those from Colchester Abbey Field and Malton, and perhaps also some from Lankhills, were probably also out of circulation (although it is difficult to be certain with the long-lived second-century aes and with third-century coins perhaps deposited only a few decades beyond their mint date). Other examples no doubt exist but are hard to detect, particularly where they are the only closely-dated item among the grave goods and there is no phased vertical stratigraphy to fall back upon for refinement or correction of the excavator's proposed terminus post quem.

TABLE 4.

POSITIONS OF COINS IN GRAVES AT LANKHILLS

The reverse types of the coins in the Group 1 and Group 2 burials all have a direct relevance in the context of a sick or dead child. Other coins, such as those framing the girl in Lankhills Grave 336 and the pierced antique coin in Poundbury Grave 370, also held a visual relevance that went beyond use as the ferryman's fee. At Watersmeet, Huntingdon, another pertinent late Roman grave contained an antique copper-alloy unit of Tasciovanus (late first century b.c.) that had been placed either in the mouth or on the eye of a male juvenile.Footnote ⁸³ The horse on the reverse prompts association with Epona in her role as a goddess of death and the underworld.Footnote ⁸⁴ The coin also adds a new twist to this study, as it provides not only a companion for the dead youth on the journey to the afterlife, but also a direct message to the underworld. A product of the mint at Verlamion, the coin bears the letters VIR beneath the horse. The skeleton is that of a child/adolescent, perhaps a boy who had past his fourteenth year and so had acquired the legal status of a man (vir), making the coin a token of absolute proof in the afterlife that he had indeed reached this stage in life.

Other pertinent coins include two Urbs Roma coins with wolf and twins reverse from infant graves at Ashton, Northants., and a burnt issue of Antoninus Pius with a funeral pyre on the reverse found in a feature containing pyre debris at Holborough, Kent. The latter had presumably been burnt with the body, perhaps having been placed in the mouth or hand.Footnote ⁸⁵ Infant burial Tombe 67 (probably of a neonate or perinate) in the Rue Perdue cemetery at Tournai, Belgium, contained a jug, a beaker, part of a bracelet and a coin of Constantinopolis, reverse Victory. A bronze strap-ring used as a hinge on a wooden box, still retaining two iron split-pins and iron escutcheons, was also in the grave, which indicates the intentional inclusion of a range of materials. In the same cemetery a child aged from two and a half to six years buried in Tombe 74 was accompanied by a beaker, a fragment of a bronze bracelet, two ebony bracelets and three coins of Constantine I: one with reverse of Marti Conserv(atori) showing Mars with shield and spear, one with reverse Virtus Exercit(us) showing two captives sitting beneath a standard bearing VOT XX, and the last with reverse Beata Tranquillitas showing an altar inscribed with VOTIS XX and surmounted by a globe. There is a military and religious slant to the reverses that matches the theme of those from the British burials and again there seems to have been deliberate inclusion of a range of materials.Footnote ⁸⁶ A coin of Philip I found in a post-Roman cemetery in Béruges, France, can also be included here, for it has the reverse type of a walking lion. The coin was pierced so that the lion was upright when suspended, while the emperor's bust was upside down. Domestic cats, like dogs, were sometimes placed in child burials as the guide and protective companion of the infant, although incidences of this practice are rare and some cases may be misidentifications of the bones of lap-dogs; like lions they would have symbolised the power of death.Footnote ⁸⁷

These examples of the amuletic use of coins are taken only from published sources, few of which record the reverse of a coin or refer to a standard catalogue, and no doubt further research would show that the practice was more widely spread. It may even have extended into the Migration Period, as at the transitional (very late Roman to early Anglo-Saxon) cemetery in Great Chesterford, Essex, where four out of eight inhumations with coins were infant burials and they contained twelve out of the total of seventeen coins. Of the other four graves one was of an older child and another an adolescent-adult, leaving only two coins deriving from mature adult inhumations. One 0–2-month-old infant had a coin of Gallienus with panther reverse by the feet and an iron finger-ring by the head, and a 12–18-month-old had an amber bead and a pierced coin of Claudius II with an altar on the reverse strung around the neck; both burials may be early. In a grave dated to a.d. 450–500 a girl aged 10–12 years held a coin of Lucilla with Iunoni Lucinae reverse in her left hand; the goddess watched over childbirth and is a maternal protective image. A coin of Tetricus I with Fides Militum reverse had been placed on the skull of a young man aged 15–25 years in a burial that Evison considered to be of a Romano-Briton. The image can be seen both as a comment on achievement and as protective.Footnote ⁸⁸

Quite how antique coins came to be available for deposition so long after their period of circulation is not clear. They may be accidental finds of either hoards or casual losses, and in some cases here, such as the denarius of Julia Maesa from Butt Road Grave 278, the hoard explanation seems fitting. However, the wear noted on some of the coins from these burials suggests that they had been both in circulation and/or used as prophylactic amulets for some considerable time before deposition, as has also been noted for pierced antique coins found in late and post-Roman contexts in France.Footnote ⁸⁹ Whether they were deliberately removed from circulation for this purpose or were collected later from accidental finds is unlikely ever to be determined, but their prolonged use shows that a belief in the potency of antique coins as amulets was long-lived.

It is far more difficult to detect deliberate selection with fourth-century issues, of which many have a martial reverse or show Victory. Some evidence of selection can nevertheless be detected. Table 5 shows the fourth-century coins from burials at Lankhills by the character of the reverse, with repeated images in a single grave counting only once, and also by the number of times the image occurs as a percentage of the graves in each age group. The final column shows the greatest number of individual (different) images in any one grave in that age group. Percentages appear high because of the small number of burials. Images of Victory occur in burials of infants, older children and adults, which might imply some evidence for selection over other reverses. Only in adult burials is Victory represented by a wreath. There is a preference for Gloria Romanorum in infant burials, but it is lost if all the martial images are combined. Older children had a wider range of reverse types than any other group, including the maternal/dog image of the suckling wolf, and also the greatest number of individual images in any one grave were those found with the older child in Grave 336 (fig. 14). The most important point raised by Table 5 may be the distinction it implies between local practice at Lankhills and at Butt Road, where infants but no older children had coins and most were clearly amuletic (Table 3).

TABLE 5.

REVERSE IMAGES OF FOURTH-CENTURY COINS IN GRAVES AT LANKHILLS BY AGE GROUP

(No.: the number of graves with that image or image type. %: percentage of the number of graves in that age group.)

In summary, when a coin in a Roman period infant grave is very old or antique, and/or it is perforated, then there is good reason to suppose that it has been deliberately selected for use either as an agent of beneficial magic during illness, or as a guardian image for the afterlife, or both. Such an interpretation is more difficult to support for fourth-century coins, but this should not prevent consideration of coin reverses as meaningful in funerary contexts.

THE AMIABLE BEAR, ARTEMIS AND CHILDREN

Looking beyond its use as a commodity in the leisure and military economies of the Roman Empire, the bear has always been deeply embedded in the myth-making traditions of northern Europe, Asia and America as a powerful protective force, and in the Roman period, as at other times, the animal was undoubtedly attributed with many layers of symbolic meaning. Ursus arctos, the brown bear native to Europe and other regions, shares with humans a considerable number of behavioural and physical characteristics, some of which have brought the two species into direct competition for millennia, such as sheltering in caves, building forest shelters from vegetation, standing erect, swimming, climbing trees and an omnivorous diet, most particularly fruit, honey and fish.Footnote ⁹⁰ The face of the bear is quite similar to that of man, especially from the front, and when skinned the animal is shown to be slimmer than the thick pelt implies, making the likeness appear even closer, while a man wearing a bear-pelt could be taken as one of the beasts. These resemblances have given rise in many societies at many periods to stories of humans being reared by bears or shape-shifting to bear form, with shamans of several northern cultures and Viking berserkers being among the latter. Euphemistic names used among peoples who regarded direct reference to the animal as taboo stress the concept of relationship, such as ‘old man’ in Sweden, ‘old claw man’ and ‘fur father’ in Siberia, ‘little uncle’ in the Carpathians, ‘the old man with the fur garment’ in Lapland, and ‘cousin’ and ‘grandfather’ among several native North American tribes.Footnote ⁹¹

Several myths illustrate the tangle of human and bear recognised by the Greeks, some belonging to a prevailing myth in the eastern Mediterranean of a divine child with an animal nurse. Atalanta, the virgin huntress of Arcadia, was exposed in the forest by her father, but was nursed by a bear sent by Artemis and then raised by hunters. The infant Zeus Kynosaura was hidden from his father in a cave in western Crete and his nurse was later turned into the Little Bear. There is evidence of a bear cult in the cave, still known today as the cave of Arkouda, the she-bear.Footnote ⁹² When the nymph Kallisto, a virgin dedicated to Artemis, took Zeus as her lover, Artemis (or Hera) turned her into a bear, but the son born from their union, Arcas (credited with founding Arcadia), was born fully human. As an adult hunter he unknowingly attacked his mother, but Zeus (or Artemis) took pity on them and set them together among the stars, Kallisto as the constellation of the Great Bear, Ursa Major, and Arcas as either Ursa Minor or, alternatively, the bright star Arcturus in the constellation of Boötes, which lies close to the Great and Little Bear.Footnote ⁹³ ‘Arcas’ and the first element of ‘Arcturus’ both derive from Greek arktos (bear), and a similar but earlier origin may lie behind ‘Artemis’.

The close association of Artemis with both the bear and children is further reflected in her cult practices and in some of her epithets. Girls between the ages of five and ten devoted to her cult at Brauron and Munichia in Attica were known as arktoi (little bears), and their adult carers appear to have dressed as bears, a reflection of the she-bear's nurturing aspect. Both carers and children also dressed in robes the colour of a bear's pelt. Fragments of a krater found at Brauron show both a priestess conducting the mysteries at her festival (arkteia) with hands raised in prayer and a male worshipper wearing bear masks (fig. 15).Footnote ⁹⁴ As well as presiding over the fecundity of animals and their death in the hunt, Artemis was also concerned with childbirth and child-rearing: as Artemis Lochia she cared for women in childbirth and as Artemis Hegemone she was leader of children. Diodorus Siculus records her as Artemis Kourotrophos, skilled in healing young children and in knowing which foods were suitable for babies. Kourotrophos is usually applied to goddesses depicted as nursing mothers, which might be thought inappropriate for the virgin Artemis, but her dual nature is manifested through the bear Artemis-Kallisto in both the story of Atalanta and in the Attic sanctuaries. She was also regarded as a substitute mother for orphaned children, reflected at her sanctuary at Brauron by the dedication of the clothing of women who died in childbirth, and by sarcophagus decorations showing a bear watching over the parting of a child from a dying mother.Footnote ⁹⁵ Early indications of the Artemis cult in Greece point to her having a strong chthonic role, and she was also a giver of wise counsel; at Athens she was honoured as the architect of the victories at Marathon and Salamis. Both textual references and excavation finds suggest that her origins lay beyond Greece, perhaps in Anatolia; the cult statue of the goddess that Apollo orders Orestes to steal in Iphigenia in Tauris was located by Euripides in Scythia.Footnote ⁹⁶

FIG. 15.

Krater fragments from Brauron showing a priestess and a male worshipper wearing bear masks. Only parts of the surviving sherds are shown. Not to scale. (After Kahil 1979)

Votive images or figurines of bears have been found at sanctuaries of Artemis and at one, Lousoi (Achaea), many votive bear teeth were found. Bears were also sacrificed to the goddess; at Patras (Achaea) live bear cubs were thrown onto a bonfire together with game animals. Though bears were victims at some cult sites, at others the reverse was true. One story of the foundation of the cult at Brauron has it that when her sacred bear was killed by an Athenian youth Artemis ravaged the city with a plague and agreed to remove it only if a number of girls served her as arktoi. Another version based on the Artemis sanctuary at Piraeus held that the goddess demanded the sacrifice of a girl as compensation for the bear's death.Footnote ⁹⁷ Kahil considers that the cult of Artemis may have preceded that of Athena, both on the Acropolis and in the affections of the city. That the association of the goddess with the bear survived into the Roman period in Greece is demonstrated by a terracotta bear of that date recovered from the Acropolis at Athens, where the cult of Artemis Brauronia had a temple.Footnote ⁹⁸

As well as the theriomorphism, inter-species mixing and ambiguous attitudes to bears that appear in these myths and cult practices, there are also strong elements of rebirth, resurrection, and guardianship. A link between the bear and rebirth is provided by the animals emerging from the caves or shelters where they have hibernated, particularly the females with their cubs. Pliny erroneously believed that the young were born as blind, hairless, amorphous scraps of flesh that were licked into shape by their mother, granting peculiar and almost miraculous power to her maternal instincts, an idea that persisted to at least medieval times.Footnote ⁹⁹ The bear's habit of hibernation is linked more widely to death and rebirth by some northern peoples, who also credited the creature with the defeat of night and winter darkness to ensure the return of the sun. The parallels to elements of Graeco-Roman mythology regarding the solar cycle and the journey to the afterlife are clear, with the bear cast in the roles taken by major deities.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The protective bear also appears in apotropaic carvings dated to c. a.d. 1174 flanking the door of the leaning campanile at Pisa. They show beneficent animals defending the entrance from dragons — a bear and bull on one side, a bear and ram on the other. In medieval bestiaries and other sources the dragon represented the Devil, the ram and bull were symbols of physical vigour, while the bear was noted for the careful nurture of its young and a knowledge of healing plants — its characteristics inherited unchanged from Artemis Kourotrophos.Footnote ¹⁰¹

An inscription in Zurich to Diana and Silvanus, set up by a group of ursarii, was inspired not by the bear being seen as her habitual (or even occasional) companion but by the prowess of Artemis-Diana as a hunter. Depictions of Silvanus with a bear clearly emphasise the animal as a victim of the hunt, one of the resources of the god's forest habitat. He was venerated by the ursarii for the protection he could provide when they entered the forest in search of that resource, just as he was worshipped by others in a wide variety of occupations associated with the natural resources of woods and forests: farm managers, timber workers, carpenters, quarrymen, hunters, and metal-workers dependent on charcoal to feed their hearths.Footnote ¹⁰² It is only as a symbol of her nurturing aspect that the bear represents Artemis, and it is no doubt pertinent that there is only one small bear among the very large collection of amber amuletic pendants and figurines from Aquileia, despite its proximity to mountainous regions such as the Julian Alps and Dolomites. The Brescia ceramic bear-lamp, from the edge of the Dolomites, seems to demonstrate the tradition of depositing a light in burials yet may also refer to Artemis, who was often shown bearing a torch.Footnote ¹⁰³

The characteristics of the bear preserved in medieval bestiaries and its appearance among the benign guardian beasts on the campanile at Pisa provide evidence for the longevity of myths and folk tales concerning Artemis in her animal guise and show that such ideas and iconography also survived for centuries at a public level. Although the Roman Diana took on many of the roles of Artemis, particularly regarding childbirth,Footnote ¹⁰⁴ no seamless line of iconography can be traced between the Greek cult and the bear figurines found in Germany, Gaul and Britain. The animal's nurturing aspect probably existed at the level of folk religion in many communities, exemplified by the cult of Dea Artio in the Rhine-Moselle area, by the bear figurines in infant burials, and perhaps also by Mercury Artaios in the Rhône-Alpes region, since Mercury was a benign deity who interceded with the gods on behalf of humans. An etymological connection between Artemis and Artio/Artaios seems a reasonable assumption, as well as one between all three and the root of an ancient word for bear.

It may be that the bear-mother goddess represented by the late Roman jet bears in Britain was a direct transmission rather than an indigenous cult. None are from mountainous or wild regions and their recovery from the major urban centres of Colchester and York and the military establishment at Malton, all in the east and all places most open to continental influence, defies any assumption that they were associated with a local folk deity of forested mountains, a description that could be applied to Artio or Mercury Artaios. In Abbey Field C2 F166 at Colchester, a burial rich with classical Roman rather than indigenous Romano-British imagery, the bear's association with a silver lunula pendant and a silver ring with a stag intaglio (fig. 2, 3–4) even hints that she may have been Artemis herself, while the jet bear found at York on a site with evidence for ritual activity may point to a cult of the goddess.

IDENTITY

Most infants and older children went to the afterlife entirely unaccompanied by any image or object, and, therefore, the families of children buried with these grave goods must have been in some way ‘different’ from the main body of the population. Both groups of graves defined here show considerable consistency in their choice of grave goods, especially Group 1, which suggests motivation by a common religious and social identity, perhaps membership of a small cult or of a much larger one which tapped into or subsumed regional beliefs. The deceased in graves that contain noticeably ‘different’ artefacts in Britain in the late Roman period are frequently identified either as military personnel of continental origin and their families or as devotees of a common religion. Other factors might also be pertinent; Allason-Jones has defined travellers moving around the Empire and gift exchange as two reasons for the widely scattered distribution of rare object types, and Cool has also pointed out that the Roman élite often had estates in more than one province and moved between them.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

It would be easy to place both the Group 1 and Group 2 graves into either the military or the religious group, or both. The graves containing jet bears are from urban and/or military sites. The black glass beads and probably also those of amber in some Group 2 graves are of Germanic origin, whilst the choice of martial images as symbols of paternal protection on the coins in both Group 1 and Group 2 burials may be direct personal references to soldier fathers. Although no specifically late Roman military establishment has yet been found in or immediately adjacent to Colchester, it does lie on the Saxon Shore and its port would have been a suitable landing point for ships setting out from the mouth of the Rhine with troops transferred from the Continent. Troop movements such as these may account for the scatter of late Roman military equipment from the town.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

The strands of religious thought are more complex and the presence of both maternal and military images in Abbey Field C2 F166 are a reminder that one grave can reflect the differing religious beliefs and familial roles and concerns of both parents. The graves containing resurrection images in both Group 1 and Group 2 graves may point to members of one of the eastern cults. Black minerals were popular in the period and also resonate with the colour of mourning clothes and the cult of Cybele. The York burial with both a jet bear and a coin reverse of Sol Invictus also hints at a pagan belief in rebirth and resurrection, and some of the Butt Road infants with coin amulets and black mineral jewellery had been buried in a Christian cemetery. Given the military nature of several of the coin reverses, together with a belief in resurrection, the worship of Mithras, the soldier's god, cannot be discounted. Where several amulets are present there is an accumulation of apotropaic power generated by coloured and shining objects, gendered objects, wild creatures such as the bears, dog teeth and ?Ethiopian head (and see other creatures in Appendix 1), noise-making objects, electrostatic objects, as well as the military and maternal imagery of the coins. The interpretation of the bears hinges upon whether they can be seen as both wild and maternal, and therefore evidence for a folk cult of a bear-mother goddess who shared, even if very distantly and loosely, those attributes of Artemis-Kallisto associated with childbirth and child-rearing and the knowledge of the healing plants appropriate for sick children. The figurines may have ‘officiated’ at many successful lyings-in, or represented the goddess as part of the religious enhancement of medical treatment, before being deposited with a dead infant, which would account for their varying degrees of wear.

The collections of amulets in Butt Road Grave 278 and Abbey Field C2 F166 (which also contained the largest and most elaborate bear) and the magnificent jewellery in Lankhills Grave 336 and Chelmsford T9 all imply access to a considerable degree of wealth, but the token single jet beads with the Malton and York bears, together with the damaged state of the Malton bear and the degree of wear on the second York bear and on many of the coins, are much more in keeping with the inherent power of the objects than with a display of wealth.

Another group of ‘different’ parents in Britain is represented by those few families (only seventeen recovered to date) who raised tombstones for their children and inscribed them with commemorative epithets.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ This is more certainly an indication of wealth, although geographically skewed to those areas of Roman Britain with suitable stone for tombstones. Although the funerary rites associated with both groups mark them out as distinctive within the general run of Romano-British burials, the link between the two groups of families is not economic status but a deeply personal understanding of the concept of mors immatura, the unnatural early death of a family member. Both the tombstone-raising families and the protective-image-depositing families wished to express their grief in tangible form, but differed in the means of expression. The former raised a visible, public, formal, above-ground memorial, and the other deposited private, below-ground items only visible in the underworld.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The first group derived comfort from making a public statement, the second from their belief in the power of the buried objects to protect. This latter belief conveys both a sense of determination to protect the child by all possible means in life and a general perception of the reality not only of the dangers of the afterlife but also of the beings who could be called upon to act as parental substitutes, a view grounded in and bolstered by a long tradition of supplying the dead with necessities for the afterlife. To them a display of status was less important than the child's need for protection, which was therefore provided in the form of amulets and other tokens invoking chthonic beings as guardians. Once buried, the objects were invisible to the living, their effect was reserved for the dead and for those believed to watch over them.