Roman Steelyard Weights — Swinging the Lead

We find a lot of lead don't we, us detectorists? Found outside the tight confines of a single period site it's very hard to put a finger on what most of it means. Even when what is found has form — it's in the shape of something recognisable — then without marking of some sort, it's still difficult to separate the items into date ranges. Spindle whorls and steelyard weights if undecorated look much the same, period for period, because the form is basic and fundamentally the same whatever time or place they were made. Find either in the middle of nowhere and no-one is going to believe you when you say 'it's Roman.'

Steelyard weights are probably the easier of the two though. The Romans used them a lot in their trading and most, but not all, are quite easy to spot for what they are because they are almost always the same shape and that's biconical. They will have an iron loop at one or either end but more usually only the remains of them.

Above is a selection of weights found on a Roman site I used to search. It was a large farm or villa and about ten acres in extent and except for modern trash hardly a thing was ever found there of any other date so confusion about lead items and their date was non-existent.

Most of the ground was thin as you'd expect on a country estate, but here and there were discreet areas where it was abundantly clear that something went on in the past. One area of only thirty or forty yards in diameter produced all the weights above and immediately adjacent was an overlapping area which produced mostly 2nd century coinage. I read this as a trading area in two parts; one where goods were weighed and sacked up and another where the money changed hands, which makes perfect sense.

Of the eight weights found six were steelyard weights whilst the two large ones are a builders plumb bob which is 70mm long and weighs an ounce over an imperial pound and the smaller one with a hole through it, probably a loom weight. Only one of the steelyard weights is made of bronze that would have weighed about two imperial ounces with its iron loops intact and it has a flat bottomed globular form, but all the rest are biconical. The small fragment of bronze with a suspension loop is part of the balance arm the weights were hung from.

The coins found were all large bronzes and denarii of the 2nd century excepting two, a copper as of the 1st century and a silver antoninianus of Elagabalus the 3rd, both of which may have been lost before and after the trading area ceased to exist.

Unfortunately I never found any trace of whatever it was that was traded, so in the absence of proof I'd say the general run of everyday victuals and provisions — grain, apples, hides, hay, meat, the bread, and the butter — the very things that wouldn't leave any traces behind for us to draw conclusions from, except for the lack of them, which may tell us enough.

Iron Age Tweezers — Extraordinary Ordinary Things

It's rarely the case in detecting that one comes across something outstanding in the general run of things and even scarcer are those things that are outstanding examples of their ordinary type, but here's a pair of tweezers that go even further than that — they are simply an extraordinary ordinary thing.

I have plenty to compare them with. Roman, Saxon, Medieval, what have you — the plain ones we find so regularly are interchangeable for date and could be anything. Basic in construction, just a strip of folded metal with a small loop at one end and with the blade terminals turned down for pulling nasal hairs and splinters out of digits, they are one of the only items I can think of that any fool could make given ten minutes of training but without a scrap of metalworking experience. What is there to do? Fold over the terminals with a pair of pliers, bend the middle around a four inch nail, crimp the thing tight with the pliers and slide it off...

Viola! Tweezers.

They are so easy I'm surprised anyone had a trade in making them — these though, are not quite so simple. Why anyone would bother to go such extreme lengths to create such a technically advanced and beautiful object when the object does not require either to function as it should is anyones guess, but here someone has bothered to, and bothered to a great degree.

Firstly they are quite substantial and beautifully shaped with curvaceous feminine outlines and a large perfectly formed circular suspension loop. Secondly they are made of great metal and were carefully finished and polished. The almost black patina is superb where it hasn't pitted which tells you they were cast from a refined and unsullied pool of the best bronze available, not out of some slop mixed together from impure copper alloy scraps, which means the bronze was actually made on site from pure copper and tin, and though that may sound far-fetched when high grade scrap would have been readily available, there's a crucial thing that says this must be true, because...

They are made of a precision engineered bimetallic strip for which equally precise alloys would have been required.

There must be a very good reason for this but I can't think of one. Modern bimetallic strips are designed so that heat makes one side expand more than the other resulting an up curving movement of the strip that can be utilised to trip a switch. These are certainly Roman tweezers at least because they were found on an exclusively Roman and Iron Age site where nothing was ever found of any other ancient period. Neither culture had any need for electrical switches, so what the hell reason is there for making them of two fused sheets of slightly different alloy? Does it make them springier and less likely to deform out of shape?

Well, I'm not about to try to find that out because as you can see they've taken a clout from the plough and might break in pieces if I did. I'm kind of sad it happened because they would have been stunning without the damage, but then again, if it hadn't occurred I 'd never have seen the truth of their construction, so in a way, the accident that befell them was something of a blessing — and it's only once in a blue moon you can say that about modern farming machines and the disastrous effects they have on buried ancient artefacts.

As for date. That patina is Iron Age. If you're a detectorist you'll know exactly what I mean when I pronounce something this date or that date solely on the basis of the way the metal and its surface looks. We dig an awful lot of copper based alloys — often hundred of items per day,  and of all different surface colours and textures. In our own detecting backyards they are instantly recognisable for the date they were made even without form as a guide because the memory accumulates a vast list of variables down the years and with enough experience is able to compute an answer in a second. We develop a 'knack' with it just as an expert perfumier develops an infallible nose for the faintest of odours.

I went and looked at every pair of tweezers on the PAS database and UKDFD too. There was nothing remotely like them in form and certainly none made of bimetal strips in hundreds and hundreds of records for tweezers of all dates except Iron Age — for which there wasn't a single entry. Then I remembered a pair found in an Iron Age bucket burial at Alkham Kent and so I went off to the the British Museum website to look for them. They were found paired to a fancy nail cleaner, and though not of the same curvy high quality, they were the same large size and the only tweezers I'd ever found with a similar large and perfectly circular suspension loop, so perhaps my instinct was correct after all...

The last thing to mention is a curiosity. The tweezers are undecorated which allows their lovely form to speak for itself. There is however a single punched annulet at the end of one of the tweezer blades and that's very odd indeed. There's no reason to put it there all alone is there?

I wonder if it is the makers mark? Now that would make them the most extraordinary ordinary thing imaginable because there's no such thing as a makers mark on tweezers or indeed any metalwork of any kind at such an early date.

Blimey if I'd gone to such endless trouble creating a pair of tweezers when my customers could have bent a bit of scrap metal around a nail for the same result, then I'd have stamped my moniker on it, wouldn't you?

A Roman Bucket Mount — Painting the Fuller Picture

During my bucket mount research extravaganza where in a week or two of work I'd pulled just about every one of the damn things ever published on the Internet onto my cluttered and unruly computer desktop, I received a message from Muddy Mick over at Detector.co.uk's forum. He'd sent news of a vessel mount of his own and one that he'd recorded with UKDFD.

It was very interesting indeed and appeared to be one still soldered to the rim of the bucket and as such the only example I'd come across that still was. It wasn't a bull-head as the general run of handle mounts are, seemed to have the general outline of a human head, but didn't appear to represent anything at all which I thought highly irregular because they always do.

It looked plain, functional and apparently without decorative embellishment apart from a double band of indents across the bottom of the suspension loop and what looked like circular indents upon it. However...

Two days later I stumbled upon a find from Castell Collen Roman Fort in Wales of a handle mount in the form of a female face on an escutcheon plate in the form of a vine leaf. I didn't see the resemblance at first but later the penny dropped, because it was the same thing! It was clear that both female heads were identical but Mick's example was mutilated. It would have remained unrecognisable as such without having the two brought together for comparison.

Mick was informed and so was Rod Blunt at UKDFD who immediately updated the record with a note about this new parallel.

Mick's return message offered to make a donation to me, a kindness which I accepted most gratefully because having things in the hand makes such a difference where work on ancient objects is concerned.

A few days later it arrived by post and the surprisingly heavy package was opened...

It was enormous!

I wasn't expecting that... It was twice the size of what I'd imagined and even though I'd seen the measurements at UKDFD its weight and chunkiness still came as a great surprise. Out came the high magnification reading glasses that make my eyes appear like owls eyes to others but really are essential for close-up examination, and I set to work.

It had been partially melted hence the destruction of the face and the piece of metal attached to the back appeared to be part of something else entirely and not the folded back portion of bronze band I'd thought it to be. It wasn't possible to state with certainty that the escutcheon plate was once a vine leaf too, the destruction of its edges had removed any sign of the original outline.

It was remarkable just how much close examination brought forth that could not be appreciated in pictures and within an hour theories were forming...

"... the damage incurred was either that caused by miscasting, partial melting in a fire or in the scrap crucible. The piece on the reverse isn't folded over from the front but appears to be a separate piece of the rim, and perhaps not even a piece of the same vessel, that's fused to the mount. The metal of the vine leaf escutcheon or vessel wall is 2.5mm thick, the face projects a good 8mm (minus the blob of melted metal) and the suspension loop is 5-7mm thick, so it's very chunky. The handle mount is 52mm in length which is big for a bucket mount when they average 30-40mm and appears to be separately cast from the escutcheon plate or vessel wall, slight differences in patination around the joint seem to indicate solder.

I think it must have been attached to a cauldron because the rim radius would have the vessel about two feet across, it is a heavy-duty item and seems unnecessarily large for a comparatively lightweight wooden stave bucket filled with a couple of gallons of liquid when it looks robust enough to hold up ten or more in a solid bronze vessel.

There's also a left eye visible just where it is on the Castell Collen mount and the same hairstyle is plain to see."

These thoughts were sent over to Rod who included them verbatim as notes on the record. Mick was delighted with the developments and glad to have a clearer idea about his find. I was chuffed to bits just being able to examine one of the many pieces I'd seen on the Internet in the hand because there's no way I'd have seen the small things that add up to a big difference otherwise.

What had been a fascinating voyage of discovery so far was made only better by the discovery of an another close parallel — from Hockwold in Norfolk came a vine leaf escutcheon plate again with the handle mount attached and in the form of the head of Bacchus!

Once again everyone concerned was informed but the verdict is that Mick's mount remains a female head which I think correct until further examples turn up that overturn that idea because the Bacchus mount looks decidedly male whereas the Castell Collen example looks anything but with its flowing shoulder-length hair.

It had been such an enjoyable task uncovering the truths and forming theories about Mick's find. It's no longer just a hunk of interesting metal but a fascinating one. Of course, we'll never know how it came to be destroyed but that's OK because the story of how it happened can be imagined however you prefer it...

A terrible house fire that ravaged a villa, a failed casting at the foundry or the bronze smith's apprentice spilling the partially melted contents of his crucible? You decide which, or even come up with an alternative story of your own because after establishing the few facts about the past that we can, imagination paints the fuller picture.

https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/860373

A Bronze Age Factory? — The Firm Evidence

With Winter comes the chance to put the flood of detecting finds made through late summer and autumn into order and evaluate their meaning. The finds from the Bronze Age 'factory' site (read here) were certainly the remains of something meaningful, but without excavation to evaluate their underlying context I thought nothing could be ventured other than they were the evidence of some kind of settlement. Which clearly they were.

About that time in the mid-2000's, aerial mapping had become available on the Internet. It wasn't easy to navigate on a dial-up modem and reloading frames to move just a few hundred of yards would take ages. Nevertheless, it was fascinating stuff and promised to unlock plenty of secrets if only the pictures were of fields in perfect condition to reveal them. Unfortunately, the majority were far from ideal.

Undaunted, I scanned across my entire operating area of three parishes and downloaded every frame to make a composite map from. I did discover things I didn't know about before, but to be frank, it was as confusing as it was enlightening with all kinds of features 'made' into what they were not, and details that later proved to be direct evidence of things, completely missed or ignored.

I no longer have those original images (luckily I've rediscovered them on the Internet since!) but remember clearly the sequence of events concerning the Bronze Age site. Firstly, there was an aerial shot of the field in crop taken in 2004. This was the same year I discovered the site but the shot was of a field of ripening wheat taken in late-summer, not when ploughed and harrowed in autumn when it might have revealed more than it did. There was hardly anything to see but a slight mark where there's a shallow depression in the field that I already knew about.

The next year I came across a second provider of these fascinating images (pictures taken in 1999) and went back to work. I became completely bound up with what they revealed about one of my pet Roman sites and concentrated on them for weeks making line maps from the startling features revealed, however, I finally got around to the Bronze Age site...

The shots had been taken of the field in stubble and there was a sketchy feature visible of dark marks around the area of the depression that I thought very interesting. It seemed to be an enclosure of some kind, but as I had already discovered, you must exercise caution when making interpretations of these kinds of crop marks because they rarely turn out to be anything remarkable...

Nevertheless, because all the finds had come from directly to the West of the marks (left in the picture) I took them seriously enough, and when I finally got back on site, gave the area inside the marks all my attention and resisted the urge to venture to the area of the Bronze Age finds thinking there was plenty of time for that later

I found nothing there of Bronze Age date but did make a few Roman period finds of a Colchester brooch, a small bronze mount, and two coins, one of which was a third century issue in very poor condition and the other a far more interesting 1st Century bronze issue of probably Vespasian, with a legionary eagle on the reverse.

Copper As with legionary eagle reverse

These Roman finds were nothing that couldn't be found in a day anywhere else in the locality in fact such a number of finds would seem a poor haul in places. I thought it odd, though, that this field had never given up a single Roman find before — also that a Flavian copper dating to the 1st century was the earliest Roman coin I'd ever found in the local area.

Unfortunately, by the time I returned the field had been quickly turned around and was drilled, so I'd missed my opportunity to extend my knowledge of the field's Bronze Age past for another year. Tragically, unforeseen domestic circumstances that winter forced a relocation the Midlands where I was then too far distant from Essex for any chance of a return, so it was also my last.

................................................................................................................................................................

Fast forward to the present day and my rekindled interest in detecting. It's 2012, and 7 years since my last visit to the field, but I'm 100 miles away in Coventry, not Essex. That doesn't stop the determined though! Nowadays we have excellent high-speed access to the Internet and aerial maps are not only available and free, but so easy to scan that whole districts can be browsed in minutes. I went back to work on the Bronze Age site...

The field ploughed and rolled - the red stars represent the scatter of Bronze Age pottery

The first pictures were disappointing. The field was rolled and besides a large dark mark that would have been inside the 'enclosure' and I thought was probably nothing more interesting than loamy soil caused by wet conditions at some point in history, the only other features visible were light areas of soil that could have been where the plough had bitten deeply and thrown up subsoil, but, such marks were rare in the surrounding fields, when found were almost always single instances, and when compared to other aerial pictures and old maps usually proved to be features such as ponds (the large mark in the next field actually was) or other small scale excavations...

Therefore, I thought they might actually be a dense collection of pits...

I took a closer look and saw a faint dark line around the large dark mark that looked like half of a square enclosure. Oddly, this 'square' seemed larger than the original sub-circular enclosure I'd hoped to see, but of which there was no visible trace.

The individual findspots of the scattered fragments of pottery that I'd noted in the field in a log, were plotted on to the aerial shot in hope of them revealing something. They failed to. I couldn't see anything I didn't already know of and had no way of going back on site to examine those light soil marks to see what they were all about or to see if that fine dark mark in the shape of a square was real or just an illusion.

It seemed that I'd hit a brick wall, however I'm determined once I get started and went back online to see if there were any other maps out there that could help me out. I soon discovered an alternative aerial map provider, and what I discovered there was simply astonishing...

Here's a sequence of pictures of the site with the new information overlaid and made visible by degree ~

I was dumbstruck when I first discovered these new pictures because they proved that the marks that I once thought might be an enclosure really were after all. They also revealed much greater detail than any previous picture had so it's possible to see that there's probably a second smaller enclosure inside. The best thing is though, they've proven beyond reasonable doubt that those pottery and metal finds really are not the traces of a long-vanished 'itinerant' bronze-smith's encampment, but really do belong to something important, substantial and long-lasting in the Bronze Age landscape of Essex.


All finds and site Epping Forest District, Essex.

Roman Oil Flask Suspension Swivel

Whilst work continues on the roman road discovery, a project that has now mushroomed into the search for what I believe is an important lost trade route of crucial importance to the heavily populated interior of the country and delivering a commodity that those living there could scarcely do without. I thought it appropriate to publish one of the tell-tale finds from what I now affectionately call, 'Halfway House.'

This fascinating object came up on the first day on the site proper, along with a few rough looking bronzes and a stunning denarius of Domitian. At first, I hadn't a clue what the hell it was for apart from it being some kind of swivel. My best shot was the swivel from a dog's lead, but that failed completely to find any kind of roman world match, so I was left dangling by it for some considerable time.

The patination types of objects, ancient or otherwise, buried in ones local soils are something learned by degree, but, they tend to be particular, and after many years digging up all kinds of things made of copper alloys, it's possible to assess quite accurately the period of otherwise un-datable scraps and fragments without any recognisable shape.

Of course such a subjective method this is fraught with problems, but in the main, it works. The patination of this object was fairly thick, the original metal of the surface long mineralised by thousands of years of burial in slightly acidic clay, and, it was brown-coloured too, and because later medieval material hardly ever is any other colour than green in this locality, therefore it was Roman, or older still.

It was also a feat of technical bronze casting I have yet to fathom, the whole thing seemingly cast in one go, but in two perfectly formed pieces that are captive to each other, turn freely around each other, but with no visible way of making that happen except by magic!

I must have endured six months or more trying, before I finally conceded defeat at my favourite game of hunting down the true attribution of unknown things entirely under my own steam, and decided to throw the object open to a wider audience in hope of an answer. The answer, when it finally came, came from none other than the great friend to us detectorists and proper expert on many things, Dr Kevin Leahy. What he delivered was not just an answer, but the definitive article.

He sent over a picture from a book by Joan Liversage in which such a swivel is depicted as the suspension swivel for an oil flask complete with suspension chains. Not only was the swivel in that picture identical in function, but very near identical in form too. It was a remarkable ID, but of course, the item then begged the question — were there ever hot baths on site where an oil flask might be used?

Well, the site always seemed rich enough for such luxuries to be available to the occupants, but now that I think the site to be a halfway house, or mansio, with a commercial interest in laying on creature comforts for paying customers, then I don't really see how the proprietors could not have provided hot baths. It would have been demanded, surely?

The only trouble with that idea is that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of a fresh water supply nearby, well not one bountiful enough to supply baths with. The river is a mile away and the site is on dead flat elevated ground, which would have meant an artesian well or spring supply. However the area abounds in springs, and there appears to be one in a nearby wood, or at least a stream has its source within it, so perhaps that is how water was got?

Perhaps one day the site will be excavated and then it'll all become clear, and if the Roman road is one day confirmed as such and the site suspected as something more interesting than just another Roman farm, then perhaps that'll happen. Till then, I'm not holding my breath.


Roman bronze oil flask suspension swivel. 44.5 x 37mm. Epping Forest District, Essex.

Ref: Joan Liversage, 'Britain in the Roman Empire' 1968, 127, fig. 50.

Aesica Brooch — A Marriage Made in Heaven

It took a while convincing the folks over at UKDN, but I finally drove the nail hard home. A fragment of an object had defied identification for a couple of days, and was in the process of being roundly dismissed as modern, but when I clapped eyes on it, knew exactly what it was without a second doubt. And it was... a brooch fragment.

However, this was no ordinary Roman period brooch we were looking at there, but one of such quality as to rival the eponymous type example itself — The Aesica Brooch.

The Carmarthen Brooch

The decoration was absolutely typical of its period, and I initially thought of the Carmarthen brooch as a place to start a proper ID from. I tend to see decoration first and form second when faced with fragmented, unknown things, because decoration is not subject to such confusion as form is when it's in bits. This decoration was clearly early Roman period, and better, it was derived from the British Celtic Tradition.

The Aesica Brooch

I then had a look at the form of the thing, and offered it up to a picture of the Aesica Brooch in one of my books. It matched perfectly. There could be no doubt, if the thing was genuine, that this was the foot (or is it the head...?) of a brooch of the very same style and of the very same high quality.

So, I posted the evidence, and sat back to await replies...

...

...

In the end, two days later, and without progress made in the meantime, I got mad. So, I posted a photoshop overlay of the fragment on top of the Easica Brooch itself, and stormed off in a huff.

A marriage made in heaven

A few days later still, I went back to check progress. Two extra pages of excitable comments had arisen, and on the second page was a missive from one of the finders that the fragment had been confirmed as being what I had said it was all along, but without so much as an acknowledgement in my direction from him, let alone a 'thank you very much, Rufus.'

And thanks would have been more than enough.

Fricking forums, eh? This is the very reason why I stopped doing ID's on UKDN all those years ago, and perhaps part of the reason why CJ dropped out, and why Rod Blunt skipped over to UKDFD and never went back. It's hard work is working for free. And a thankless task, to boot.

Blimey, every self-respecting detectorist should be aware that the Aesica Brooch is one of the most important objects of the entire early Roman period ever found in this country. This new example of one not only similar, but of better metal — because the Aesica Brooch is 'merely' gilt-bronze, where this one is silver-gilt — is, to my knowledge, only the second ever found of the same high standard, and is therefore an important thing itself, and in every conceivable respect.

That should have been obvious, but detectorists do not learn the trade 'sky down,' from studying the great and classic treasures, but learn it 'ground up,' from the mundane, commonplace and everyday. Therefore quotidian things are easily recognised, but seriously important things rarely are.

I think that the finders need to get out there and comb the land it arose from for the rest of it, before the archaeologists claim it as the treasure it certainly is, throw a cordon round the place, and do the same...

Then again, given that this was found in two pieces some 15 years apart from one and another, and in the meantime has never been suspected as being anything of note, was never checked out as such, and almost hit the junk pile as nothing better than modern trash when it finally was, then perhaps that would be the very best course of action...