Inscribed Medieval Gold Brooch Recovered in England
A metal detectorist has discovered a medieval gold brooch with a series of Latin and Hebrew inscriptions. The artefact, found in Wiltshire in the U.K., may have mixed religion and magic in an attempt to give its user protection against illness or supernatural events.
The Latin inscriptions translate to “Hail Mary full of grace the lord/ is with thee/ blessed art thou amongst women/ and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Amen.” The Hebrew initials for “AGLA” are also inscribed on the brooch and represent Hebrew words that mean “Thou art mighty forever, O Lord.”
The gold brooch dates to sometime between A.D. 1150 and 1400 and may have been used in an attempt to prevent fever, according to a brief report on the brooch published online by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and written by Sophie Hawke, a finds liaison officer for PAS. In England and Wales, metal detectorists report their discoveries to the PAS, a government-sponsored organization that publishes reports and images of the finds on its website and sometimes in scholarly journals.
This gold brooch dates back around 800 years and has a series of Latin and Hebrew inscriptions engraved on it.
What was it used for?
Live Science talked with a number of scholars with expertise in medieval history and magic to get their thoughts on what the brooch might have been used for.
The Hebrew initials that represent the phrase “Thou art mighty forever, O Lord” may be important to the brooch’s purpose, some of the scholars said. This phrase “figures prominently in medieval magic,” Richard Kieckhefer, a professor of religious studies at Northwestern University, told Live Science in an email.
He noted that the other prayers engraved on the brooch were common religious prayers at the time. “What I would want to emphasize is that this sort of combination of ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ is not unusual,” Kieckhefer said, noting that the mixture of religious and magical meanings would have given the brooch special powers in the eyes of the person who created it.
The Hebrew initials for “AGLA” were “very commonly used in magic, from high ritual magic to protective amulets and charms,” Frank Klaassen, a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan, told Live Science in an email. “It is one of many divine names or words of power common in medieval traditions.”
But why would someone wear such a brooch?
“Wearing Bible quotes like this was sometimes done as a way of protecting a person against misfortune,” such as fire, sudden death or supernatural forces such as demons, Catherine Rider, a professor of medieval history at the University of Exeter in the U.K., wrote in an email. “It’s hard to be sure that it’s magical — it’s perhaps more in a grey area between what we’d see as magic and religion.”
Given the brooch’s small size and mention of the Virgin Mary, the person wearing it may have been a woman. With its “small, though elegant, size, I would guess it was used on a woman’s garments of some light fabric,” Karen Jolly, a history professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told Live Science in an email. “This woman was of sufficient means to have the object or have been given it. Whether she was literate or not, she would know what it said and what it meant,” Jolly said, adding that perhaps the brooch served a protective purpose related to pregnancy and childbirth.
The brooch, with its tiny engraved inscriptions, was well crafted. “My main reaction to the brooch is that it was made by somebody who was highly skilled and that its first owner, at least, was a pious person who recorded on it both devotion to the Virgin and a charm to protect them against various threats,” Anne Lawrence-Mathers, a history professor at the University of Reading in the U.K., wrote in an email.
The brooch is now going through the Treasure Act, as required by British law. It’s a process by which a determination is made as to what will happen to the artefact. It may end up being placed in a local museum depending on a number of factors. For instance, one possible outcome is that the metal detectorist may be given a monetary reward and the artefact may be handed over to the government, which could place it in a museum.
Palau’s green pyramids: could be a geo-archaeological project
According to oral tradition, a huge serpent wound around the hills on the Palauan island and created the terraces with her body. But how did the monumental earthworks on Babeldaob really come about?
Researchers from the Institute for Ecosystem Research at Kiel University (CAU), in collaboration with the Commission for the Archaeology of Non-European Cultures (KAAK) of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), have now discovered a worldly explanation: the earth formations were created by hand over generations.
They were used to grow food for the population, but also as burial sites.
During the excavation, the research team worked closely with the residents of Palau and received broad support.
Work for generations
Monumental buildings from prehistoric times are widespread in Oceania, including the well-known stone figures and ceremonial platforms on Easter Island.
The early cultures of Oceania often significantly transformed the landscapes of the islands.
Around 500 BC, this development may have commenced in Palau. “The effort involved in the creation of the earthworks there is certainly comparable with the pyramids in Egypt or South America,” said Dr Andreas Mieth, who is one of the three project leaders.
“Over many generations, and with an almost unimaginable amount of work, millions of tons of soil must have been moved by workers. An achievement that could only be possible in a politically well-organised society,” explained Dr Annette Kühlem, research coordinator and excavation leader.
“Presumably the builders had hardly any tools available for the work. And even if they did, they were made of stone or organic material.” Using geo-archaeological methods, the interdisciplinary team of soil scientists, paleoecologists and archaeologists have unravelled the mystery of the construction of the terraces.
As a basis, the builders used weathered volcanic rock, interspersed with large quantities of ceramics. In contrast, the upper layers consist of carefully applied humus soils.
Evidence of planting pits in the humus layers suggests extensive horticulture on the terraces. There are no indications of erosion. “So this was also technically very sustainable work,” stated Professor Hans-Rudolf Bork, project leader.
But the summits on some earthworks, which are up to ten meters high and visible from a distance, and which were also largely built by human hands, had a completely different function to the terraces, which were mainly used for horticulture.
At one of the summits in the south of Babeldaob, the scientists and their local helpers were able to uncover six skeletons within a complex burial site.
“This is a sensational find and to date unique for the earthworks of Palau. Such well-preserved burials have never been discovered there because bones usually decompose very quickly in the acidic soils,” said Dr Annette Kühlem. Perhaps mineral additives may have slowed down such decomposition here – one of the theses that should now be pursued using laboratory analyses.
New findings for research and the population
The discovery has great scientific potential for the experts. For the first time, they are able to document the details of a prehistoric burial on Babeldaob and compare it with today’s traditional burial practices.
“Due to the fairly well-preserved skulls, there is still hope of being able to carry out DNA analyses and thus relationship analyses, perhaps even in comparison with the population living in the area today. This may potentially also close a gap in tracing the settlement of Oceania,” explained Dr Annette Kühlem.
The project participants suspect that only members of the elite were buried on the intricately laid and shaped summits of the earthworks. Thus, even after their death, their social status was made clear in a prominent way, visible from afar.
The new findings have elicited an extraordinarily positive response in the island state of Palau. The research into the terraced earthworks enabled the local people to gain a new perspective of their own culture.
Political as well as traditional officials and dignitaries, but also school classes and the Palauan press, have taken the path up the steep summit of the earthworks to visit the site.
The discovery was the subject of a headline on the front page and an extensive report in the Island Times. All those involved then celebrated the conclusion of the fieldwork in December 2021 in a very special way. The six deceased from the summit of Ngerbuns el Bad were reburied in a ceremony with traditional chants by the women of the highest clan of the associated village. For a burial, the skeletons were covered with woven mats made of pandanus fibres.
An areca nut (betel nut) wrapped in leaves was placed with each of the deceased before the mat was covered with soil. In this way, respects were paid to the dead once again after hundreds of years.
Archaeologists puzzled how ‘big clue’ over Cerne Abbas Giant’s age was missed
Carved into the hillside of rural Dorset is a 55-metre tall naked man wielding a huge club in his right hand. With an 11-metre erection on full display, he is England’s largest and rudest chalk hill figure. Situated near the village of Cerne Abbas, he was created by scouring away at grass to reveal the white chalk below and filling the trenches with more chalk from nearby quarries. Alongside the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, he is one of two remaining human hill figures in England.
Both have scheduled monument status, giving them protection against unauthorised change. Yet both have been the source of intense mystery and fascination for many hundreds of years. Until recently, nobody knew who created him, or when, or why. Archaeologists and camera crews from the BBC’s Digging for Britain series headed to the southwest to carry out their own analysis. Though the earliest written record dates back to the late 17th Century, antiquarians speculated it could have been a Saxon deity, while others believed it could have been a Roman-made figure.
Dr Mike Allen hinted the club, or staff had been largely ignored.
The Giant has been a source of intense speculation for years.
In July 2020, a survey of snail shells unearthed at the site suggested that the Giant is “medieval or later”, as no snails from the Roman period were found at the site. A further survey, using optically stimulated luminescence, analysed samples from the deepest layers of sediment, pointing to a construction date of 700-1100AD — the early medieval and late Anglo-Saxon period. Professor Alice Roberts, the Digging for Britain presenter, said archaeologists might have missed a “big clue” right under their noses when investigating the Giant’s age. Dr Mike Allen, an environmental archaeologist, told the documentary: “That’s one thing that archaeologists are normally very good at — saying why they’re there, what was happening and what date they are.”
He added: “Everyone seems to have been carried away with his nakedness and the member. Carved into the hillside of rural Dorset is a 55-metre tall naked man wielding a huge club in his right hand. With an 11-metre erection on full display, he is England’s largest and rudest chalk hill figure. Situated near the village of Cerne Abbas, he was created by scouring away at grass to reveal the white chalk below and filling the trenches with more chalk from nearby quarries.
Alongside the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, he is one of two remaining human hill figures in England. Both have scheduled monument status, giving them protection against unauthorised change. Yet both have been the source of intense mystery and fascination for many hundreds of years.
Until recently, nobody knew who created him, or when, or why.
Archaeologists and camera crews from the BBC’s Digging for Britain series headed to the southwest to carry out their own analysis. Though the earliest written record dates back to the late 17th Century, antiquarians speculated it could have been a Saxon deity, while others believed it could have been a Roman-made figure. In July 2020, a survey of snail shells unearthed at the site suggested that the Giant is “medieval or later”, as no snails from the Roman period were found at the site. A further survey, using optically stimulated luminescence, analysed samples from the deepest layers of sediment, pointing to a construction date of 700-1100AD — the early medieval and late Anglo-Saxon period.
Professor Alice Roberts, the Digging for Britain presenter, said archaeologists might have missed a “big clue” right under their noses when investigating the Giant’s age.
Dr Mike Allen, an environmental archaeologist, told the documentary: “That’s one thing that archaeologists are normally very good at — saying why they’re there, what was happening and what date they are.”
He added: “Everyone seems to have been carried away with his nakedness and the member.
The abbey (white square) once stood beneath the Giant.
“No one had really talked about the obvious — the Abbey sitting behind us.”
Prof Roberts explained that below the Giant once lay Cerne Abbey, founded in 987AD, right in the middle of the period archaeologists now know the Giant was created. She asked Martin Papworth, a National Trust archaeologist, what connection a huge naked figure might have to a Benedictine monastery.
He explained: “Just right next to his outstretched hand is, in fact, the abbey, which was established at the same time.”
The Abbey’s wealth was created predominantly by pilgrims worshipping the local holy man, St Eadwold of Cerne. Legend has it that he lived as a hermit on a nearby hill after he planted his wooden staff on the ground there, and it miraculously grew into a tree. Prof Roberts suggested the Giant’s club could actually be a staff sprouting leaves.
Mr Papworth asked: “Is he St Eadwold? What do I think? I don’t know who he is.
“But this medieval date makes all sorts of theories possible.”
Others, however, have speculated on different theories.
Homer Simpson has drawn next to the Giant in a 2007 publicity stunt.
Alison Sheridan, a freelance archaeological consultant, told the New Scientist: “It would almost seem to be an act of resistance by local people to create this fantastically rude pagan image on the hillside. It’s like a big two fingers to the abbey.”
National Trust researchers flew sophisticated drones over the Giant in July 2020 and carefully examined the images afterwards. Their findings hinted the Giant’s phallus might not be original, and subtle shifts in the earthworks may have been made around the 18th Century.
He told the Washington Post that “there appears to be an outline of a belt”, suggesting that once upon a time he might not have been naked at all.
Either way, more research is required to get to the bottom of this long-lasting source of fascination. The Cerne Abbas Giant, regardless of its age, has become a crucial part of local culture and folklore. In 2007, a giant Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was drawn next to the Giant as a publicity stunt for the opening of The Simpsons Movie.
In 2012, pupils and members of the local community recreated the Olympic torch on the Giant, marking the passing of the official torch in the build-up to the London 20212 Olympics. He has appeared in several films and TV programmes too, and his image has been reproduced on various souvenirs and local food produce labels.
He has remained a prominent tourist attraction in the region, with most tourist guides recommending a ground view from the ‘Giant’s View’ lay-by and car park just off the A352.
Archaeologists find a 9,000-year-old shrine in the Jordan desert
A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists said Tuesday that it had found a roughly 9,000-year-old shrine at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan’s eastern desert.
This photo shows two carved standing stones at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan’s eastern desert. A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists said Tuesday that it had found a roughly 9,000-year-old shrine.
The ritual complex was found in a Neolithic campsite near large structures known as “desert kites,” or mass traps that are believed to have been used to corral wild gazelles for slaughter.
Such traps consist of two or more long stone walls converging toward an enclosure and are found scattered across the deserts of the Middle East.
“The site is unique, first because of its preservation state,” said Jordanian archaeologist Wael Abu-Azziza, co-director of the project. “It’s 9,000 years old and everything was almost intact.”
Within the shrine were two carved standing stones bearing anthropomorphic figures, one accompanied by a representation of the “desert kite,” as well as an altar, hearth, marine shells and miniature model of the gazelle trap.
The researchers said in a statement that the shrine “sheds an entirely new light on the symbolism, artistic expression as well as the spiritual culture of these hitherto unknown Neolithic populations.”
The proximity of the site to the traps suggests the inhabitants were specialized hunters and that the traps were “the centre of their cultural, economic and even symbolic life in this marginal zone,” the statement said.
The team included archaeologists from Jordan’s Al Hussein Bin Talal University and the French Institute of the Near East. The site was excavated during the most recent digging season in 2021.
If you want to kill a reindeer with a bow and arrow you have to get as close to the animal as you possibly can. You probably can’t be further away than 10-20 metres. Which is difficult, with an animal that will flee at the smallest sound or movement.
As glaciers and ice patches in the mountains melt due to climate change, items of the past reveal themselves. The Secrets of the Ice programme monitors 65 sites in Innlandet county, and have recovered thousands of items from the past. This rare iron arrowhead was found at Sandgrovskaret in 2018.
The mountains and ice patches in Sandgrovskaret didn’t provide hiding places for the hunters, so they had to construct some. 40 such so-called hunting blinds – a rock wall shaped like a half-circle that hunters would hide behind – were found when glacial archaeologists visited the site four years ago.
“This was a big hunting location”, archaeologist Espen Finstad says to sciencenorway.no.
Hunting blinds are stone-built structures made to hide the hunters so as not to scare the reindeer away. They are a regular feature on the reindeer hunting sites surveyed by Secrets of the Ice, both at the ice and further down the mountains. The hunting blind in this picture was used for shooting towards reindeer on the snow and ice in the background. On hot summer days, the reindeer seek relief from pestering insects by walking onto the snow and ice.
Hunted in the mountains and lived in the valley
The mountain in question is 1800-1900 metres above sea level, so the hunters wouldn’t have been living here.
“Most likely they lived down in the valleys, but clearly had large hunting stations higher up in the mountains”, Finstad says.
People have hunted here for thousands of years.
“In the Stone Age, they would have lived in simple settlements, and during the Iron Age they would have had grand long houses down in the valley”, Finstad says.
Some such settlements were discovered by glacial archaeologists about a year ago, dating back to the Viking Age and Early Medieval period.
The Secrets of the Ice team at Sandgrovskardet (from the left): Espen Finstad, James Barrett, Mathilde Arnli, Elling Utvik Wammer, Øystein Rønning Andersen and Erlend Gjelsvik
Good camping spots that protect against the wind were hard to find, but the team managed to squeeze in the individual tents and the common mess tent between rocks and puddles.
Manipulating reindeer with sticks
The archaeologists also found 32 so-called scaring sticks at Sandgrovskaret, which were used in the reindeer hunt.
“Some of these were lying in a line, indicating where a type of psychological fence for reindeer once stood”, Secrets of the Ice write in a post on their Facebook page.
Scaring sticks are the most commonly found from the melting ice in Innlandet. Some sites have hundreds, others just a few. In total, more than 1000 such sticks have been recovered.
And they were used, as the name suggests, to scare the animals into position.
The sticks are usually about one metre long, with a movable object attached to the top, like a thin wooden flag that would flap in the wind.
“You would bring a bunch of these sticks to the mountains, and depending on weather and wind and where the reindeer are found, you would calculate how best to make them move toward the hunting blinds, and place lines of these sticks along the ice”, Finstad explains.
The movement from the sticks would make the reindeer worried and move in the opposite direction. It was a way of manipulating the animals to walk in the direction where you were waiting for them with your bow and arrow”, Finstad says.
Bones and arrows
Five arrows were found, a nice little collection, Finstad says.
Three of them have preserved iron arrowheads. One of them is of a rare type, and it’s the first find of this type of arrowhead on the ice. It is previously known only from a single grave found in the county, which dates to around AD 550-600. The other two arrowheads are well known from Iron Age burials.
The other two arrows were very long – up to 1 metre – but did not have arrowheads. These are from earlier periods, likely 800 BC based on the shape.
Bones and antlers from reindeer were collected but have yet to be dated using DNA analysis.
At another site, which was kept secret for some time, the glacial archaeologists once found a total of 68 arrows dating from the Stone Age to the Medieval Period. It was a prehistoric arrow bonanza, according to the Secrets of the Ice blog.
The rare arrowhead is the first of its kind found on the ice.
This iron arrowhead is of a well-known type from Iron Age burials in the lowlands. It has a flat tang and a long blade, and dates to AD 300-600. The photo also shows the broken remains of the wooden shaft.
Perfect conditions, in 65 sites
The first traces of finds at Sandgrovskaret were seen in 2013.
“We were there just to explore the conditions and could see some materials that had been uncovered from melted ice. Over the years we returned sporadically and saw more items”, Finstad says.
A larger mission was then planned for 2018. The archaeologists spent a week in the challenging environment, surveying the site systematically, documenting the hunting blinds, and rescuing as many finds as they could. The report from this mission was just published.
But the ice may have melted more since. At Sandgrovskaret, and other locations. Glaciers are sensitive to climate change, and a recent mapping showed that Norway’s glaciers in total have shrunk about 14 per cent over the past six years. Many smaller ice patches have nearly disappeared.
The Secrets of the Ice project has a total of 65 sites in Innlandet county where there are finds, spread out over Jotunheimen, Dovrefjell and Breheimen.
“These are great distances”, Finstad says.
“We have a window of opportunity from August and until the snow falls, where more items might surface and we can go rescue them. So every year we have to plan and prioritize”, he says.
There have been finds from melted glaciers in other parts of Norway, but no other project can boast as many as Secrets of the Ice – spanning from the Stone Age and up until the Plague in the 1300s.
“These are the highest mountains in Norway with several thousand years old ices, be they glaciers or ice patches. There has been plenty of reindeer here throughout the centuries, and short distances between the mountains and valleys where people have lived. So both the conditions for preservation as well as the cultural history setting in this area means that there has been a lot of activity here and that things have been left behind and preserved”, Finstad explains.
Sandgrovskardet has six individual ice patches, five of which have archaeological finds. The ice patches seen in this photo amass a total of about 170 000 square metres. The highest peeks were most likely not covered with snow in the past either.
One of the cairns, which has partly fallen down, from the ancient mountain trail at Sandgrovskaret.
Forgotten mountain trails
The surveys at the Sandgrovskaret site also revealed an ancient mountain trail. According to local history, this was used all the way up to the 19th century. What the archaeologists don’t know, is how far back the use of the mountain trail goes. The trail is marked by a number of so-called cairns, little man-made piles of stone used to mark the path.
“It’s impossible to say based on these cairns how old the trail is”, Finstad says.
At another site, however, Lendbreen in Jotunheimen, the melting ice revealed a forgotten mountain pass, as well as a number of artefacts dated back to the Iron Age. Here the archaeologists know that the pass was since forgotten and not in use. In total, the archaeologists have discovered approximately 800 artefacts left behind by people who were there centuries ago, sciencenorway.no wrote about this pass.
Remains of sledges, dead animals, clothing and household items melted out of the ice in the pass. Many of the artefacts found, including a knife and a mitten dated to the Viking Age, are very well preserved. Radiocarbon dates of the finds in fact confirmed that the trail was most intensely used around 1000 years ago, during the Viking Age.
“The lost mountain pass at Lendbreen is the greatest discovery of the Secrets of the Ice program”, according to archaeologist Lars Pilø.
Fossil child skull from 2.2 million years ago reveals how humans outsmarted the other great apes
A fossil more than two million years old could help explain why man became so brainy.
The Taung fossil, an early hominid that was discovered in South Africa in 1924, was a significant feature that could shed light on the evolution of intelligence.
The Taung fossil, an early hominid that was discovered in South Africa in 1924, was a significant feature that could shed light on the evolution of intelligence.
Importantly it has a ‘persistent metopic suture’ – an unfused seam – in the frontal bone, which allows a baby’s skull to be pliable in childbirth. In great apes, this closes shortly after birth but in humans, it doesn’t fuse until around two years of age – allowing brain growth.
The unfused seam allows babies to be born with larger brains, and the delay in fusing allows the brain to grow larger in early life, reports Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Taung fossil has become the ‘type specimen,’ or main model, of the genus Australopithecus africanus.
An australopithecine is any species of the extinct genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus that lived in Africa, walked on two legs and had relatively small brains.
Dr Dean Falk, of Florida State University, said: ‘These findings are significant because they provide a highly plausible explanation as to why the hominin brain might grow larger and more complex.
‘The persistent metopic suture, an advanced trait, probably occurred in conjunction with refining the ability to walk on two legs.
‘The ability to walk upright caused an obstetric dilemma.
‘Childbirth became more difficult because the shape of the birth canal became constricted while the size of the brain increased. The persistent metopic suture contributes to an evolutionary solution to this dilemma.
‘The later fusion was also associated with an evolutionary expansion of the frontal lobes, which is evident from the endocasts of australopithecines such as Taung.’
Taiwan finds 4,800-year-old fossil of mother cradling baby
The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.
Archaeologists in Taiwan have found a 4,800-year-old human fossil of a mother holding an infant child in her arms, museum officials said on Tuesday.
The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.
“When it was unearthed, all of the archaeologists and staff members were shocked. Why? Because the mother was looking down at the baby in her hands,” said Chu Whei-lee, a curator in the Anthropology Department at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science.
The excavation of the site began in May 2014 and took a year to complete. Carbon dating was used to determine the ages of the fossils, which included five children.
The Origins of the Mummified Mother and Baby
The scientific excavation began in 2014 and took about a year to complete.
A team of archaeologists led by Chu Whei-Lee of Taiwan’s National Museum of Science was working on a Neolithic site 6.2 miles (10 kilometres) inland from Taiwan’s western coast.
Today, that area is called Taichung City but the site itself has been dubbed An-ho. Experts believe shorelines have shifted over the years and that An-ho was once a coastal village.
Indeed, over 200 shark teeth have been found in the site’s dwellings, however, whether these teeth were practical, decorative, or spiritual is not known. The inhabitants of An-ho were most likely Dabenkeng people.
“The Dabenkeng people were the first farmers in Taiwan, who may have come from the south and southeast coasts of China about 5,000 years ago,” says Chengwha Tsang of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “This culture is the earliest Neolithic culture so far found in Taiwan.” Taiwanese Dabenkeng culture featured corded ware pottery and stone adzes.
While the Dabenkeng lasted until the 3rd millennium BC in Mainland China, Taiwanese Dabenkeng lasted only until around 4,500 BC.
Yet from Taiwan, the Dabenkeng spread across Southeast Asia and Oceania, bringing their culture and language with them.
“They were probably the earliest ancestors of the Austronesian language-speaking people living nowadays in Taiwan and on the islands of the Pacific,” said Tsang.
Treasures and lead coffin found in the ancient Roman mausoleum
An ancient mausoleum with the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain has been discovered. Archaeologists found a huge amount of litharge – a lead oxide and by-product of silver extraction – which suggests a clan was melting down metal to get at its precious material. The 15 kilos of litharge discovered at Grange Farm, an excavation site in Gillingham, Kent, is the largest amount ever uncovered at a Roman Britain site.
An ancient mausoleum with the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain has been discovered.
The 15-year research project was triggered following excavations in 2005 and 2006, prior to a house-building.
The 15-year research project was triggered following excavations in 2005 and 2006, prior to a house-building. The earliest evidence for occupation at Grange Farm occurs during the Late Iron Age, about 100BC before the site grew into a small Roman rural settlement in the late first century AD, and the settlement evolved until the 5th Century AD when it was abandoned.
Metal extraction took place at one end of a building, with fireplaces in the middle, and at the other end high-status domestic use. Researchers say that it was likely a large clan who were also working the land, hunting, raising animals and metalworking.
An archaeological dig at Grange Farm in Gillingham, Kent, where an ancient mausoleum has been discovered
The ancient mausoleum that was host to the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain
As the 3rd and 4th centuries in the Roman world operated on a gold and silver economy, the control of those metals was closely tied to imperial taxation.
This is why the investigators believe the silversmithing may have been done illicitly. Dr James Gerrard, senior lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Newcastle University, said: ‘Was that legal? Was that supervised?’
‘Quite why people were refining silver from silver-rich base metal alloys is a mystery.
‘Quite what the objects being melted down were is a mystery too.
‘They probably weren’t coins, as the bronze coinage had too little silver in it.
‘We might expect that the refining of silver here was either being done officially by the ‘Roman state’ or perhaps illicitly. It’s an unusual aspect of the site.
‘Maybe they were making silver objects like the ingots in the Canterbury Treasure.’
An officially stamped Roman British silver ingot, produced between the 4th and 5th centuries AD, weighing 353 grams (0.78 pounds). The stamped inscription reads EX OFFE HONORINI, which translates “from the workshop of Honorinus.” It was found in 1777 with two gold coins of Emperor Arcadius and one of Honorius, and dates to the end of the Roman period in Britain.
The investigators also discovered a monument, which would have stood at almost the height of a two-storey house, proving the occupant was very high-status. In the lead coffin, investigators found a middle-aged to elderly woman, who may have been a leader or chief of the clan.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘The mausoleum is a house for the dead.
‘It’s basically a funerary monument. It probably dates back to the late 3rd Century or early 4th Century AD, and it was a stone building structure, probably with a tile roof. It was probably quite tall – certainly visible from the Medway – perhaps about the height of a two-storey house or a little less. It’s quite unusual in that it had a tessellated pavement of plain mosaic – a plain red colour – which is really unusual for Roman Britain.
‘This middle-aged to the elderly lady was buried there in a lead-lined coffin. She was probably local from the isotope analysis we did on the teeth. The silver suggests wealth. The mausoleum is wealth. It takes resources to build the structure like the mausoleum and it takes resources to put someone in a lead coffin. She had quite a hard life though. She had osteoarthritis but she lived to a good age and was buried with reverence. I think she was quite a high status. She was no peasant and she was someone with clout locally. Further evidence of wealth comes from gold jewellery found in the rubble of the mausoleum – including a necklace or bracelet made of gold filigree double-loop links threaded with polyhedral faceted beads of variscite.
Evidence of wear and modification suggests it may have been a necklace turned into a bracelet for a child, and it’s not known if it would have come from the mausoleum itself or sarcophagi possibly located next to it. Unusually, the mausoleum stayed intact until the 11th or 12th Century with the Anglo-Saxons left the ancient Roman structure alone. But it was not unoccupied, as the researchers found the mausoleum had been taken over by owls.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘We think during the 5th Century the grave is disturbed.
‘We don’t know why that was – and then the building stayed up until the Norman Conquest.’
‘We’ve got tawny owl pellets. The building becomes ruinous and then you’ve got owls living here.
‘It’s the end of the Roman Empire, the mausoleum is abandoned and the owls take up residence – we can’t be too precise about when that was but it would have been somewhere between the 5th and 10th Century. The researcher said he believes the monument was left alone by the Anglo-Saxons who may have used it as a navigational structure for people coming down the River Medway.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘If the building is visible from the Medway it might be a navigational structure for people coming down the river. It’s the 5th Century and water was more important as a means of travel.’
At the site, the team uncovered in all 453 Roman coins, 20,000 fragments of pottery weighing a quarter of a ton, and 8,000 animal bones. The mausoleum was moved after Domesday in 1086 when the land – recorded as having pasture, a tidal mill and six unfree peasants – was given to Bishop Odo of Bayeaux, half-brother of William the Conqueror.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘The site then becomes the medieval manor.
‘Probably what happened was they reused the stone from the building to build a chapel. At 1122, the manor was called Grenic, then Grenech in 1198, Grenge in the 14th Century, and more recently it became known simply as Grange Farm.
The Grange Farm dig produced considerable evidence of high-end silversmithing including this Saltern Hearth with a group of fired clay pedestals.
Dr Gerrard added: ‘It’s the end of a long process,’ he said. ‘I started my involvement in 2005 as a site assistant and digger on a short-term contract. I was in my late 20s. It’s 15 years later and I’m in my early 40s and I’m a senior lecturer at Newcastle University. It’s been with me a long time – it’s part of my career. For all the other people in the report, it’s been a huge part of our lives..’
