Archaeologists have found seven pairs of Anglo-Saxon brooches in seven graves during an excavation in Gloucestershire

Archaeologists have found seven pairs of Anglo-Saxon saucer brooches, one pair in each of seven burials unearthed in an excavation in South West of England Gloucestershire.

The wonderful discovery was announced on Twitter by Cotswold Archeology.

At the site, the Cotswolds Archaeology team unearthed more than 70 Anglo-Saxon burials, some of which had luxurious grave goods. They are from the 5th or 6th centuries.

Seven pairs of gold-gilt plate (or saucer) brooches were found, in seven separate graves. Plate brooches such as these were decorative items, worn in pairs at the chest and used to fasten clothing.

(1/3) These beautiful #AngloSaxon disc brooches originate from a site that revealed features dating from the Iron Age through to the 3rd or 4th century and beyond. We carefully excavated over seventy Anglo Saxon burials, some containing high-status grave goods… #Archaeology pic.twitter.com/ou1fV8rDt3

— Cotswold Archaeology (@CotswoldArch) April 4, 2022

They’re known as saucer brooches after their shape: a circular central body with a raised rim.

They are made of gilded copper alloy and were relief-cast (cast from a single piece of sheet metal) with decorative motifs in geometric patterns.

The designs on cast saucer brooches are based on geometric motifs. The commonest design is the running spiral, so-called because each of the spirals is linked to the next and they run around the brooch, normally with a pellet in the center. The commonest number of spirals is five or six, but there are occasionally more.

Cast saucer brooches are similar to button brooches, with the upturned rim that gives them their name. They were worn in pairs, so in graves, it is normal to find two very similar, but not mould-identical, brooches together.

The saucer brooches are still a high-status signifier for burials from this early period of Anglo-Saxon history in England, often found in tandem with other expensive pieces of jewelry.

Ranging in size from 20-70 mm in diameter, saucer brooches were worn in pairs across the chest to fasten garments. Their designs are more simple than, for example, the long square-headed brooches which were so large they offered much more space to create complex, highly sophisticated designs.

“Those we uncovered were either positioned one on each shoulder or two next to each other on the left shoulder with an associated clothing pin, giving a vivid impression of how they once looked on their wearers,” they wrote on their Cotswold Archeology Facebook page.

3,000-Year-Old leather Shoe discovered On A Beach In Kent, UK

A Bronze Age relic found on a Kent beach is believed to be the oldest shoe ever found in the United Kingdom. The shoe, made of leather, is 3,000 years old and was discovered by archaeologist Steve Tomlinson.

Tomlinson sent the shoe to an East Kilbride, Scotland unit for carbon dating even though he didn’t think it was particularly noteworthy when he first discovered it. He got a response stating the shoe was from the late Bronze Age five weeks later.

“The date they had given me was just astonishing. It’s incredible, and it’s so, so rare. Textiles like this don’t survive often, they have to be found in anaerobic conditions,” Tomlinson told Kent Online.

The shoe is potentially the oldest found in the British Isles, and is also thought to be the smallest Bronze Age shoe found in the world. The shoe is 15cm long, and it is thought that it was worn by a child aged two- to three years old.

Previously, the 2,000-year-old shoe discovered by archaeologists at the Somerset quarry in 2005 was thought to be the oldest in the United Kingdom.

However, the discovery in Kent is even older – and is also potentially the smallest Bronze Age shoe ever found in the world,” Kent Online reports.

“I will certainly look forward to the future and what we can all learn from this incredible find. Finding something like that is quite extraordinary. It opens up history too; we just know nothing about these kinds of things,” Tomlinson said.

Now, additional research is being done to see what kind of animal the leather was made from and whether any DNA can be derived from the artifact.

The Bronze Age shoe is anticipated to go to the British Museum once all scientific investigations have been completed.

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles

Markings found in Roman tiles have shown workers were “more of a mixture” of people than first thought. The imprint of a woman’s sandal and a written name were found on items recovered from a 3rd Century tile factory at Priors Hall Park, Corby.

Experts said they showed workers were not just young male slaves but “literate men and women in nice shoes”.

Nick Gilmour, from Oxford Archaeology, said the marks showed it was “not clear cut” who the Roman workers were. Archaeologists have been working on-and-off at the Northamptonshire site for about 12 years, ahead of a development of more than 5,000 homes.

The Little Weldon Roman villa had first been uncovered in the 18th Century, but in 2011 during a geophysical survey a second Roman villa was revealed.

Oxford Archaeology took on the excavations in 2019 when Urban & Civic took over the development. They uncovered a temple/mausoleum that was turned into a pottery, brick and tile manufacturing centre sometime in the later 3rd to early 4th Century, to make building materials for Roman villas.

The latest findings come from the analysis of recovered material, including six tonnes of discarded tiles which are now being recorded. Mr Gilmour said Romans in the area were producing tonnes of tiles weekly to distribute around a network.

While many are just basic tiles, “maybe one in 10,000 is really interesting”, including a “big thick tile” in which somebody had used their finger to trace letters in it, he said.

Individual tilers would often mark about one in every few they produced with a signature, so they could get paid for what survived the kiln. But these tile signatures were usually patterns and symbols which showed that workers were not high status.

Mr Gilmour said the latest find was “really unusual” because it reads “Potentius fecit”, which translates as “Potentius made me”, or as some linguists would say, “I was made by Potentius”.

“They have actually written their name with their finger,” he said.

“It demonstrates that the tiler was literate – perhaps surprising for someone who was in a role usually carried out by an indentured servant… so they were higher status than we thought.”

He said his team had tried to find other examples of this kind of signature, but had not yet seen one.

“It’s not definitely the only example, but we have asked a lot of experts in the field so we are close to convinced there isn’t another one,” he said.

“The irony is the reason that we have got it is because it failed, it wasn’t even vaguely flat and wasn’t used on a villa or it wouldn’t have been in the tile rubbish tip.

“So he might have been literate, but he was maybe not so good a tiler.”

Tilers also used to check every few tiles with their feet by tapping them lightly, to see if they were dry and ready to be fired. A second terra cotta coloured tile with small indentations is believed to be the imprint of nails on the bottom of a woman’s sandal, as it showed a very narrow foot shape.

“It looks like women were working in the tilery as well, so it’s not as clear cut as we thought,” Mr Gilmour said.

“The workers were not just young male slaves – these markings show there were literate men and women in nice shoes as well, so it was more of a mixture.

“There was definitely still a hierarchy… the man in the villa would have been in charge, but who the workers were is not clear cut.”

He added that the footprints of animals and imprints of leaves found in the tiles would also be studied, to find out whether the work was seasonal and what the environment was like.

Mr Gilmour added that the finds in Corby showed the “possible scale” of the tile industry. During a second phase of work in 2021, they found an intact Roman road that shows how Corby joined up with surrounding settlements.

“It’s not uncommon to find a kiln next to a villa, but it would be a small one just for making tiles for the one villa,” he said.

“But at Corby they were producing tiles to sell to a wide area, which is a much more modern idea.

“The next step is scientifically examining them under a microscope to look at what’s in the clay, so that longer term we can see where they were moving them to.

“Was it two or three miles or across [the now] county or further?”

Tudor Pendant Recovered in English Field

Charlie Clarke had been metal detecting for just six months when he stumbled across what he calls his “once in a lifetime – no, once in 30 lifetimes”, find. He was exploring a Warwickshire field, turning up “junk” and about to call it a day, when a clear beep on his detector led him to dig to the depth of his elbow. What he saw there caused him to shriek “like a little schoolgirl, to be honest. My voice went pretty high-pitched”.

What the Birmingham cafe owner had discovered was a huge and quite spectacular early Tudor pendant and chain, made in gold and enamel and bearing the initials and symbols of Henry VIII and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.

When Rachel King, curator of Renaissance Europe at the British Museum, first heard about the discovery, she had to sit down. Nothing of this size and importance from the Renaissance period had been found in Britain for more than 25 years, she said.

The heart-shaped pendant, attached to a chain of 75 links and made of 300 grams of 24-carat gold, is decorated with a bush bearing the Tudor rose and a pomegranate, Katherine’s symbol, and on the reverse the initials H and K. Ribbon motifs carry the legend TOVS and IORS, which King called “a beautiful early English Franglais pun” on the French word “toujours” and “all yours”.

Despite initially seeming almost too good to be true, said King, careful scientific analysis has proved the pendant to be genuine. What experts have not been able to uncover, however, despite scouring inventories and pictures of the time, is to establish a personal link to Henry or Katherine.

“Nonetheless, its quality is such that it was certainly either commissioned by or somehow related to a member of the higher nobility or a high-ranking courtier.”

One hypothesis, based on careful analysis of its iconography and other historical records, is that the pendant may have been commissioned to be worn or even given as a prize at one of the major tournaments of which Henry was so fond, around the time of the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Though its size suggests it would only fit a woman, it may not have been meant to be worn at all.

Nothing remotely similar survives from the period, said King. “In the British Museum, we’ve got the largest collection of objects from the early Tudor periods in precious metal; none of them are anything like this.”

But what on earth was it doing in Warwickshire? On that, she said, they were still “feeling their way”. “We don’t know why it was in Warwickshire and who had it there. At least not yet.”

Discovered before the start of the pandemic, the pendant was unveiled at the launch of the annual reports of Treasure Act for 2020 and the Portable Antiquities Scheme for 2021.

A total of 45,581 archaeological finds were recorded in that period, of which 1,085 are classed as treasure – 96% were found by detectorists, most on cultivated land.

The Tudor pendant has not yet been valued but is certain to be worth a highly significant sum which Clarke will split with the landowner of the field. He said it meant his four-year-old son, also called Charlie, would have “the best education possible”. “That’s all it’s really about. Birmingham is a bit of a rough place, and I think any parent … would want the best education for their children.”

Inevitably, Charlie wants to be a treasure hunter when he is older, says his dad. “He wants to go to the jungle and find a box of pirate treasure. At that age, it must be so intriguing.

“People say it’s like winning the lottery; it’s not. People actually win the lottery. When was the last time a crown jewel was unearthed?”

Roman Intaglios Discovered in Bath Drain in England

Taking your valuables with you into a swimming pool is always a risk. The Romans should have paid better heed, judging from the quantity of gemstones recovered from the drain of one of their bathhouses.

As many as 30 semi-precious stones have been discovered by archaeologists almost 2,000 years after their owners lost them at a site in modern-day Carlisle, just behind Hadrian’s Wall.

The stones had dropped out of their ring settings, their glue probably weakened in the steamy baths. They were simply flushed into the drains when the pools and saunas were cleaned.

Their loss would have been painful as these were engraved gems, known as intaglios. Although barely a few millimetres in diameter, they bear images whose extraordinary craftsmanship suggests they would have been expensive items in their day – the late 2nd century or 3rd century.

One bather lost an amethyst depicting Venus, holding either a flower or a mirror. Another lost a red-brown jasper featuring a satyr seated on rocks next to a sacred column.

Frank Giecco, an expert on Roman Britain who is leading the bathhouse excavation, was astonished by the collection: “It’s incredible,” he said. “It’s caught everyone’s imagination. They were just falling out of people’s rings who were using the baths. They were set with a vegetable glue and, in the hot and sweaty bathhouse, they fell out of the ring settings.”

He can imagine the Romans cursing after realising their loss. “They may not even have noticed until they got home because it’s the actual stone falling out of the rings – although we’ve also found one ring with a setting.”

Professor Martin Henig, an expert on Roman art at the University of Oxford, said: “Metal expands. If the stone is not properly secured, it can fall out, as it can today with people bathing. I imagine that the gems recovered from the drain were accumulated over time, and we must remember that a lot of people used those baths.”

Intaglios have previously been recovered from drains at York and at Caerleon near Newport. The Romans faced the dilemma we still face today of either losing their valuables in the water or to a sneak thief while they were bathing. This is reflected in several “curse tablets” found in Bath and elsewhere, which wished revenge on the perpetrators of such crimes.

One of those curses targets a ring thief: “So long as someone, whether slave or free, keeps silent or knows anything about it, he may be accursed in blood, and eyes and every limb and even have all intestines quite eaten away if he has stolen the ring.”

Henig said: “The difficulty is that you needed to take your ring off, but there were dangers. Where did you leave it? People must have been very upset when they lost a ring or the gem set in its bezel.”

The bathhouse was adjacent to the most important Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall, the empire’s northern frontier, which held an elite cavalry unit and had links to the imperial court. Excavations will continue next year, but the evidence recovered so far – including imperial-stamped tiles – suggests that the bathhouse complex was monumental and opulent.

Giecco said: “You don’t find such gems on low-status Roman sites. So they’re not something that would have been worn by the poor.”

Beyond their decorative purposes, as rings worn by men and women, there was a symbolism within their imagery. The newly discovered intaglios include military themes, such as the god Mars holding a spear, and fertility, notably a charming image of a mouse nibbling a branch – Romans saw mice as symbols of rebirth or fertility.

Giecco said: “Some of the intaglios are minuscule, around 5mm ; 16mm is the largest intaglio. The craftsmanship to engrave such tiny things is incredible.”

The drain discoveries also include more than 40 women’s hairpins and 35 glass beads, probably from a necklace.

Victorian-Era Lead Coffin Unearthed at Leicester Cathedral

Excavations at Leicester Cathedral have uncovered the lead coffin of a surgeon at the city’s Victorian asylum.

Edward Entwistle Wilkinson’s remains were unearthed in a dig by University of Leicester archaeologists.

The find triggered research into his life and career as the first resident medical officer at the Leicestershire and Rutland County Lunatic Asylum.

Academics found he had made “a significant contribution” to modern medicine in the city.

The university team found Wilkinson’s coffin while they were digging in the area of the cathedral’s song school, which has been demolished to make way for a new visitor centre as part of the continuing Leicester Cathedral Revealed project.

It was among more than 1,000 burials so far revealed by the archaeologists in rows which were in use from the late 1820s to the closure of the cemetery in 1856.

Amber Furmage, from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), discovered Wilkinson, who lived from 1796 to 1846, was a house surgeon and apothecary at the Leicester Infirmary and the first resident medical officer of the then newly opened county asylum.

The asylum building would later become the first University of Leicester campus and is now called Fielding Johnson Building.

During his 17 years in the role, he expanded the dispensary, improved the medicinal planting in the hospital’s garden and helped procure an Infirmary Carriage for Accidents.

At the asylum, his peers praised his talents and conduct and “his ability and tenderness in the treatment of patient”.

Wilkinson died from typhus fever in July 1846 aged 50.

A plaque in the great south aisle of the cathedral was dedicated to him and his wife Elizabeth.

Ms Furmage said: “The discovery of a named individual is always exciting due to the amount of information we can track down about their lives, and this has been particularly true in the case of Edward Entwistle Wilkinson.

“Over his lifetime, he made significant contributions to the development of modern medicine in Leicester, leaving a lasting impact on the city and beyond.”

The remains will be reinterred by Leicester Cathedral once the project is completed.

Rare Iron Age Wooden Axle Discovered in England

Part of an “exceptionally rare” Iron Age wooden axle from a chariot or cart has been found in a waterlogged pit.

The fragment was uncovered in 2021 at Eastbridge, Suffolk, ahead of tree planting for the Sizewell C nuclear power station project.

Recent analysis revealed the hazel wood axle was made between 400BC and 100BC.

Archaeologist Chris Fern said it joins a handful of finds “from British later prehistory, such as the axle found at Flag Fen, Peterborough”.

The dig unearthed two Iron Age pits, which experts believe were most likely used as watering holes for livestock.

As they were waterlogged, they provided “ideal preservation conditions for wood”, said Mr Fern, a Cotswold Archaeology post-excavation manager.

The base of the axle had been broken, burned and reused and was found with charred boards, which might also have come from the same chariot.

Mr Fern said: “Most of the spindle – for the wheel hub – survives, as well as part of the rectangular axle-bed which would have been secured to the underside of the cart or chariot.”

The fragment has just been identified through analysis by dendrochronologist Michael Bamforth, a research associate at the University of York.

The axle had been repurposed in ancient times to prevent the collapse of the waterhole into the site’s sandy soil, Mr Fern said.

He added the axle” is an “exceptionally rare find”, which can “be viewed in the context of the famous chariot burials of the Iron Age in Britain, such as those from Wetwang, East Riding of Yorkshire”.

Mesolithic Human Remains Discovered in Northern England

Human remains unearthed in a cave in Cumbria have been dubbed the “oldest northerner” after being found to date back 11,000 years.

Bone and a shell bead discovered at Heaning Wood Bone Cave, near Great Urswick, were analysed by the University of Central Lancashire.

Dr Rick Peterson said the site had been used for burials.

He described it as evidence of “some of the earliest dates for human activity” in northern Britain after the Ice Age.

The site had been excavated since 2016 by local archaeologist Martin Stables with the university brought in to “try to interpret the evidence”.

Dr Peterson, who teaches archaeology and cultural anthropology, led the academic team.

He said several bodies from the cave had been dated and the group was amazed when one set of remains was found to be much older than thought.

“The caves have been dug before, in the 1950s, and work by Liverpool John Moores University about 10 years ago dated some of the material to the early Bronze Age [about 4,000 years ago].

“There were at least eight people buried in this cave. Some of them came back [dated] from the Bronze Age, some of them were Neolithic which is about 6,000 years ago.

“One individual and one piece of shell bead buried with him came back with a date roundabout 11,000 years ago which is astonishingly early for the north.

“To put it in perspective, the last Ice Age lasted until about 11,600 years ago. After that period, the global temperature warmed rapidly over about 100 years to give us the climate we’ve got today.

“These people are just about as early as we could expect them to be – the pioneers reoccupying the land after the Ice Age.”

Earlier human remains have been discovered in southern England and Wales but the destructive effect of past glaciations means such finds are rare in northern Britain, the university said.

Before this discovery, the “earliest northerner” was a 10,000-year-old burial from the nearby Kent’s Bank Cavern discovered in 2013.