Snettisham Jeweller's Hoard

Pot and some of the contents from the Snettisham Jeweller's Hoard, discovered in 1985.
Jewel-set rings from the Snettisham Jeweller's Hoard.

The Snettisham Jeweller's Hoard is a collection of Romano-British jewellery and raw materials, found during the construction of a house in the Norfolk village of Snettisham in 1985. The hoard is thought to be the working stock of a jeweller, buried in a single clay pot in around AD 155. The finds include the working tip of a quartz burnishing tool (its handle has not survived), partially or fully completed items of jewellery, and raw materials: mainly silver coins, scrap silver items and silver ingots, but also six pieces of scrap gold, and many engraved gemstones to be set in rings. The presence of scrap gold and silver and absence of base metals indicates that the jeweller dealt mainly with high-status customers.

The 17.5 centimetres (6.9 in) high pot in which the hoard was found is local grey-ware, spherical with relatively narrow opening and base, with a capacity of around 1.6 litres (0.35 imp gal; 0.42 US gal). Some items - such as bracelets - had to be bent to fit through the opening. Within the pot were found:

The silver finds were covered in a layer of silver chloride corrosion, and some items including copper were covered with green copper carbonate verdigris.

The finds are held by the British Museum.

See also

Further reading

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, February 10, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.