Civilisations Big Saturday and Other (Big) Topics

Family enjoying the Roman artefacts at the Civilisations Big Saturday

A couple of weeks ago, Manchester Museum held one of its regular Big Saturday public events on the theme of civilisations. Intended to tie-in with the BBC documentary presented by Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga, we showed objects representing a number of ancient and more recent civilisations from Manchester Museum’s rich collections. These included particular favourites of mine the Etruscans, as well as the Indus Civilisation (presented by Stephen Welsh, Curator of Living Cultures) and China. We also wanted to use this as an opportunity to publicise our new temporary exhibition Nature Through Roman Eyes, which opens on 6th April so we showed a selection of Roman exhibits. In this we were most ably assisted by two Classics undergraduate students, Lucy and Amy.

Etruscan inscription from Pompeii in Manchester Museum’s collection

I showed the Etruscan pieces, one of them an example of the somewhat rarer longer inscriptions that have survived from antiquity. Something like 13,000 Etruscan inscriptions are known, of which 4,000 are fragmentary and most of the remaining 13,000 inscriptions are short, often consisting of just a name, such as the father or the mother, his or age, the public office held and formulaic phrases. An Etruscan vocabulary, in so far as we presently understand is only 250 words long (Brian Fagan The 70 Greatest Mysteries of the Ancient World).  Added to this is the mystery of where the Etruscans came from, with plausible suggestions that they originated in what is now Turkey. The region of Etruria in northern Italy is named after them. Perhaps the story of Aeneas and the founding of Rome isn’t so legendary after all.

There is some support for this apparently from DNA evidence, similarities with languages such as Hurrian and the relatively equal role that women seem to have enjoyed Etruscan society. The Romans were scandalised that Etruscan women drank wine in public, for instance, and Pliny the Elder writes that women could be fined for drinking wine during the time of the Republic. In antiquity, the Etruscans were once powerful and influential, so much so that the first kings of Rome were Etruscan. They were particularly skilled in haruspicy, the inspection of the entrails of sacrificial animals in order to divine the will of the gods. One of the last people to understand Etruscan was the Emperor Claudius (AD 41-54) who had an Etruscan wife.

Facial reconstruction of an Etruscan woman in Manchester Museum’s collection

On my table I posed the question: whatever happened to the Etruscans? Of course, they were absorbed into the expanding Roman Republic. They weren’t slaughtered or dispossessed of their lands but became allies of Rome, and gradually Etruscan, as a language, disappeared. It is a salutary reminder of the loss of linguistic diversity in the modern as well as the ancient world. An article by Paul Bignell in The Independent on Sunday  (13/12/2009) drew attention to the fact that of 6,500 languages spoken in the world, half are expected to disappear by the end of the century. Ninety-five per cent of the world’s languages are spoken by just five per cent of its population. If you take the example of the Rai tribe in Nepal – discussed in the article -children and young people are educated in Nepalese, and as the elders die off with the passing of time this ancient language will disappear. A linguist and academic at the University of British Columbia, Prof Mark Turin, has been director of the World Oral Literature Project since 2009, which aims to record threatened languages, many of them without a written tradition, before they disappear forever. Were it not for the fact that Etruscans were literate, we would have far less understanding of their language than we now have, and that is not a great deal.

I mention this because the exhibition that will follow Nature Through Roman Eyes, Heritage Futures, will look at the issue of the loss of linguistic diversity, amongst others in the autumn. Why should this matter? It’s important in a more practical way than saving languages simply for the sake of saving disappearing languages. Quoting from the Independent on Sunday article: ‘Experts now agree there is a correlation between areas of cultural, linguistic and biological diversity… Places that are diverse in species are diverse in languages and cultures.’ And to speak another language is not simply a means of communication, it is to immerse oneself in the culture of another people, to experience the world from a different perspective and even for this to influence the speaker’s world view.

Heptapod orthography from Arrival

This is one version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, beautifully explored in the science fiction movie Arrival (2016). In Arrival Dr Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, will write a book called The Universal Language Translating Heptapod. Although the circular characters – non-linear orthography – look like the stains left by coffee mugs, speaking the Heptapod language affects the cognition of the speakers, allowing them to experience events in the present and in the future. In a review of the film one critic wrote: ‘we (may) live on the same planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other.’ And to return to the Heritage Futures theme, a 2010 documentary called Into Eternity dealt with ‘attempts to devise a new universal language to label underground repositories of nuclear waste – labels whose warnings have to be understood by future humans whose language has evolved away from what we know now.’ Remember too the transmission in Ridley Scott’s Alien, which is not a distress call but a warning beacon that is translated too late to stop the horrific course of events.

Vessels from the Hildesheim hoard in ‘Nature Through Roman Eyes’

Whilst I talked to visitors about the Etruscans and how little we understood of their language, Amy and Lucy meanwhile were talking to visitors about the objects from the Pliny exhibition. They showed a replica of a bowl from a large hoard of Roman silver vessels found at Hildesheim in Germany in 1868. Manchester Museum, along with other institutions, has replicas of this important hoard. They must almost qualify as antiquities in their own right because they were made by French manufacturers, Christophe et fils, during the late 19th century. We know from previous experience that sometimes replicas can be almost as important historically as the real thing. If you are wondering what the connection to Pliny the Elder is, well, it’s because he served during the mid-1st century AD in the Germanies – the provinces of Upper and Lower Germany – where he served with a fellow officer who took a luxurious dinner service on campaign:

‘And yet, by Hercules! to my own knowledge, Pompeius Paulinus, son of a Roman of equestrian rank at Arelate, a member, too, of a family, on the paternal side, that was graced with the fur (a mark of privilege), had with him, when serving with the army, and that, too, in a war against the most savage nations, a service of silver plate that weighed twelve thousand pounds!’ (Natural History 33.)

Now I’m not suggesting that the Hildesheim hoard is the silver dinner service that once belonged to Pompeius Paulinus, but it does enable us to illustrate Pliny’s anecdote. It shows the opportunities for self indulgence made possible by the Roman Empire. At the same time significant amounts of money were going overseas to pay for expensive Chinese silk and Indian spices. We might describe this as evidence of Roman globalisation. There is a moralising aspect to Pliny’s writing but it is clear that overall he thinks Roman civilisation is a good thing, even if some Romans have indulged themselves rather too much in the luxuries provided by the empire.

Illustrated capital from a Renaissance edition of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History

As I think is becoming abundantly clear, the subject of the Nature Through Roman Eyes exhibition is something of a godsend  to encyclopaedic collections such as those of Manchester Museum because natural history to the Romans extended far more widely than we would think of it today. In the 37 books of Pliny’s Natural History there are sections on every conceivable subject under the sun, including astronomy, numismatics, mining and the history of art. An exhibition about Roman natural history, therefore, has the potential to show the many different – and sometimes unexpected facets – of Roman civilisation and bring in every discipline and collection in the Museum. For years, museum curators have been urged to do more interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work and if ever there was an exhibition topic to realise this, Pliny’s your man. Added to which, Pliny himself is a marketing officer’s dream because he died during the eruption of Vesuvius  in August 79 AD.

So there you go: Civilisations, the Etruscans, Pliny the Elder and Nature Through Roman Eyes, loss of linguistic diversity, science fiction movies, Heritage Futures and nuclear waste. Working at Manchester Museum is never short of variety.

Archive sheds light on ancient forgery

Bronze figurine of the god Mithras in the Manchester Museum collection

More time ago now than I really care to remember I wrote something about the Mithras sculptures found in Hulme during the 19th century and showed the small figurine of Mithras from the Manchester Museum collection. At the time I remember thinking there was something rather odd about the figurine and that suspicion was strengthened when Jan Kindberg Jacobsen (Curator, Department of Ancient Art in Copenhagen)  got in touch in January 2013 to say he was aware of two other similar figurines and to ask if ours was a forgery.

There the matter rested until this morning when during one of the curatorial team’s joint working meetings we looked at some archival material that David Gelsthorpe, Curator of Palaeontology, had found in store. We had great fun going through archive correspondence from the 1920s  allocating the paper documents in the folders to different disciplines and recognising names of important donors. In this age of digital media it is salutary to reflect how much important information is lost when email accounts are closed, whilst copy correspondence a hundred or more years old may yield vital information for research.

Investigating the archive at one of our Wednesday curatorial meetings

One of letters we looked at this morning was written by Francis Haverfield (1860-1919), one of the first serious academic students of Roman Britain. He held the Camden Professorship of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. On 6th May 1903 he wrote:

My dear Sir,

The little bronze of which you have been good enough to send me a photograph, is a forgery. The inscription is a blundered copy of a real inscription on stone, now at Paris. Other forgeries from the same original are known – all very likely, by the same forger, who may have lived in the 17th or 18th century. See F.Cumont, ‘Textes at monuments relatifs au culte de Mithra’ ii pp 398-445. I am,

Yours very faithfully,

F.Haverfield

In the same bundle is a note on a card from a Mr J.S.Hall:-

Dear Mr Hoyle,

Many thanks for your letter. It is disappointing to hear that the figure is a forgery, but it seems to be a forgery of some antiquity and interest. I picked it up for 3/- 6d (42 pence in today’s money!) in a “Marine (?) Store” in Nottingham and I feel sure that the man who sold it me & told me the story was only reflecting what he had been told by the man who sold it him. In any case I do not think he (illegible word?) over-charged me! Very truly yours, J.S.Hall

Haverfield’s letter dated 8th May 1903

 

A letter of 16th May 1903 from a French correspondent says (in translation):

Sir,

Thank you very much for sending the bronze figurine that you recently acquired. But I’m afraid that this is a modern piece. A series of similar figurines  with the inscription DEO INVITO were reported in Germany and Italy and seem to be the work of some Renaissance forger (c.f. Texts and Monuments Relating to the Mithraic Mysteries Vol.II p.445).  Besides you have perhaps already noticed yourself that I am pleased to be able, thanks to you, to add another example to this small collection.

Believe me Sir, most sincerely yours,

 

The signature is difficult to decipher but appears to be Franz Cumont of 75 Rue Montoyer, Brussels, and author of the work referred to earlier.

 

Amazing what you can find in the archives isn’t it?

 

 

 

 

 

Dodecahedron Mystery Solved?

Modelling glove made with a dodecahedron

It is quite some time since I was last persuaded to don my Roman arms and armour (for good reason, I’ve still got the chafe marks on my shoulders to prove it) but an opportunity presented itself recently when my office was flash-mobbed by the Curator of Egyptology, Campbell Price, with visiting researcher Regina Degiovanni who proceeded to give me an impromptu demonstration of how to make a pair of Roman gloves using a bronze dodecahedron… I feel I should point out that Manchester Museum has a wonderful knitted Coptic sock in its Egyptology collection, making us a popular port-of-call for experimental archaeologists who seek to puzzle out how people in antiquity rose to the challenges that everyday life threw at them, such as how to knit themselves a pair of socks, or, as in this case, a pair of gloves.

Coptic sock in the Egyptology collection with Regina’s instruction

Except that I suspect the reverse was true: presented with the mystery of what the bronze dodecahedra found in the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire were for, the intrepid experimental archaeologists arrived at the ingenious solution that they were used for knitting gloves. Sadly the wonderful archaeology collection at Manchester Museum is not blessed with an actual example of a dodecahedron but Regina had managed to obtain a 3D scan of one. Generations of Romanists, Classical scholars and archaeology students have long debated the purpose of these enigmatic objects. With ten sides, containing circular openings or apertures of different diameters and surmounted by knobs where the planes intersect, the famous dodecahedra have long defeated academic enquiry. The someone hit on the solution that they were used for knitting and Regina showed how it was done and asked me to model the fingers of the gloves (see photo).

Finger gloves and dodecahedron

Regina had been in contact with living history interpreters who dressed as Roman soldiers and they had talked about the need to cushion or insulate their hands against metal arms and armour, which not only chafes but in cold weather can be very uncomfortable to carry or wear. I happened to have a replica Roman spear lying around the office and so it was, literally within a minute, my calm orderly existence talking to Sam our Conservator before going to meet my 2 o’clock appointment was turned upside down and I found myself posing for a photo, pilum and dodecahedron in hand, wearing knitted finger stalls. I don’t suppose many people can say they’ve done that.

The fingers of the glove

One thing is for sure: the gloves certainly helped to take the chill off the metal spear I was holding. Whether this does indeed solve the mystery of the dodecahedra is another question. What we need is some use wear analysis of the surface of the knobs on the outside of actual archaeological examples of dodecahedra using a stereomicroscope or a metallographic microscope to see if indeed there is any evidence of threads having been looped around the knobs consistent with the process of knitting. If this does indeed prove to be the case then activities for public programmes in the Museum for the foreseeable future can expect to be dominated by the experimental knitting of gloves to go with our Coptic sock. Does a new career modelling experimental archaeological knitwear beckon I wonder? Watch this space.

Guest blog: Mice in Antiquity by Greg M.

Roman mouse lamp in Manchester Museum collection (accession number 40647)

Regular readers of this Blog will no doubt recall that mice have sometimes featured in the posts. It is a great pleasure to host a guest contribution by student Greg M. who recently studied a Roman lamp with a depiction of a mouse in Manchester Museum’s collection. He kindly agreed to write this up as a  post for the Ancient Worlds Blog:-

I was given the opportunity by my Sixth form College to undertake an Extended Project, or EPQ, on any topic I liked. Naturally I turned to the Manchester Museum for inspiration.
Having contacted the Museum’s Curator of Archaeology, Bryan Sitch, I was pointed towards a small, intriguing object. Nestled within the museum’s vast array of ancient artefacts, lies an ancient oil lamp with a small mouse design appearing on its surface. This lamp entered the Museum in the early 1900s, having been collected by a Victorian architect and antiquarian named William Sharp Ogden (1844-1926). The lamp arrived with little associated information card, offering little precise evidence of its history, provenance or age.

The Curator, Bryan Sitch, suggested I research both the lamp itself, so as to contribute to the Museum’s records, and also the cultural significance of mice in antiquity. While I anticipated the occasional source of mouse-related information, I found myself increasingly confronted by a complex and fascinating cultural assemblage, including Egyptian comics, satirical literature and Roman Republican anti-decadence legislation!

I sought to learn more about the role of oil lamps in the ancient world, when and where the lamp was made and the role of mice in ancient culture.

For thousands of years, oil lamps provided a key source of light for those who wished to extend the hours of daylight. Oil lamps provided a compact, portable and customisable light source that was to be found in homes, tombs and businesses across the ancient world. With the arrival of mould production in 3/4^th Century BC Greece, factories around the Mediterranean began to churn out a massive range of lamp designs. The cost of using these lamps, however, limited their use. According to Diocletian’s Edict of 301 AD, an anti-inflationary fixing of prices, a litre of oil was the equivalent of 20 pence, compared to 14 pence for a teacher’s monthly wage. Therefore lamps were a luxurious, but widespread part of Ancient life.

Having ordered the hefty Royal Ontario Catalogue of Ancient Lamps through the public library system, I discovered that the Manchester lamp closely resembles those produced in Northern Africa. The Manchester lamp’s form closely mirrors those produced at ancient Tunisian lamp manufacturing sites. Furthermore, the chronological development of lamp design, with the emergence and development of the ‘fat type’, suggests the Manchester lamp dates from the 3^rd Century AD.

Detail of mouse on lamp. The curl behind the mouse is the handle of the lamp.

While many lamps are often designed with standard ancient images, such as a posing Hercules, I found that flexible production created a huge variety of designs. The small mouse, pictured drinking oil, on the Manchester lamp initially seemed a strange choice of image for decoration. However, I found mice to be a key part of ancient culture.

The 2^nd Century AD Roman ‘Messy floor mosaic’, now held by the Vatican, contains an extensive scene of gluttony, with scattered food and a mouse nibbling the remains. This image suggests the Manchester lamp may be a similar satirical reflection on Roman voracity, or perhaps it’s just to be regarded as a cute image, or an ironic prediction of might happen to the oil in the lamp.

Messy floor mosaic in the Vatican

In addition to consuming food, mice could be food themselves. While Mary Beard’s ‘dormouse test’ suggests that the longer you wait for edible dormouse to appear in a banquet re-enactment, the greater its accuracy, they were certainly part of the elite diet. Greedy Roman nobles would fatten up prized specimens in a ‘Glirarium’, before serving them glazed with honey. The aristocratic taste for dormice led to Imperial censors banning their consumption in 117 AD.

Vessel for raising doormice

When you think of Ancient Greek epics, Homer’s noble and fearsome warriors spring to mind. In the 3^rd Century BC epic, the ‘Batrachomyomachia’, however, the warriors are mice attacking a hoard of frogs. In this parody, ‘Crumb snatcher’ is killed by ‘puff jaw’ and war ensues. This epic, which was apparently painted on tavern walls, strikes at a surprisingly common theme in literature, mice warriors. On an Egyptian papyrus from 1150 BC, an army of mice launch an offensive against a citadel of cats. This suggests that the parodying of generally austere war imagery enabled a cultural exploration of war, and it also suggests that mice were a seen in a sympathetic light. Dr Campbell Price, Curator of Egyptology at Manchester Museum, commented that this image was a fairly common ‘inversion’ of the real world that is sometimes shown on playful or Satirical ostraca, on which the powerful cat is made to be subservient to the mouse.

Mice storming the city of the cats on an Egyptian papyrus

In the story of the ‘Town Mouse and Country Mouse’, Horace extends one of Aesop’s fables, exploring the relative merits of rural and urban living. Again mice are used as a harmless and charming tool to make a point, with the traditional rugged values of the countryside triumphing over urban sophistication.

By exploring, at great depth, such a seemingly small but highly specific object, I have gained an enormous amount. In addition to my understanding of the Manchester lamp’s cultural and historical role, my eyes have been opened to the possibilities of ancient history. By scratching the surface of this tiny strand of inquiry, I uncovered a host of possible questions and answers and had a lot of fun in the process.

Thanks to Greg for writing about this charming object in the archaeology collection.

 It’s a pleasure to report that Greg has now published an article about his research on Roman mice in an archaeology magazine released in time for New Year 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

Making a Good Impression with Roman Inscriptions

Just got back exhausted but exhilarated from a really successful teaching session about Roman inscriptions with a class of children from both Manchester Grammar School and a Blue Coat School studying Latin and/or Classical Civilisation. The session was led by Dr Andrew Fear from University of Manchester Department of Classics. The idea was to engage schoolchildren with Roman material to help them with their studies and to encourage them to maintain an interest in things Classical.

Earlier this afternoon we divided the class into two groups and one half looked at making impressions from Roman inscriptions using the cliche mould or ‘wet squeeze’ method and the other studied some Roman coins that our Numismatist Keith Sugden had got out in advance for them.

sestertius of Trajan (AD 98-117 ) obverse

The cliche mould technique involves placing a sheet of blotting paper over an inscription and using a stiff brush to push the softened paper into the incised surface of the piece of stone. This is a very old way of making accurate copies of Greek, Latin and other inscriptions in the field. The practical aspect of making a cliche mould from an inscription really engaged the students, whereas talking to them about epigraphy  would almost certainly have left them cold. Fortunately no damage was done to a Roman inscription because we used a piece of marble with an inscription that is a fake. That wasn’t a problem because the whole point of the exercise was getting the students involved in doing something practical.

It’s all in the brush work

 

Finished cliche mould of Roman inscription

The other exercise was looking at and understanding Roman coins. We got out a denarius and a sestertius of the emperor Trajan (AD 98-117) and a denarius and a sestertius of the emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138). Armed with a crib sheet from their earlier session with Andy and a magnifying glass and an angle-poise lamp, the students studied each coin, transcribed the inscriptions or legends and translated them. In this way they were able to consolidate what they had learnt earlier about the use of abbreviations such as COS – Consul, or AVG – Augustus, or PP – Pater Patriae for ‘father of his country’. We swapped the coins over half way so they could look at different coins.

Looking at Roman coins

The students picked this up remarkably quickly, further evidence, if any were needed, that there really is nothing like the real thing for inspiring and engaging young (and old) minds. The thought of teaching Classics without supporting objects seems to me to do students an injustice, and, of course, we are well-placed at the Museum in being able to draw upon some amazing collections and provide invaluable hands-on  experience. If that doesn’t enhance the learning experience, then nothing will. We hear a great deal about digital interpretation and augmented reality, and new technology certainly has a place but I don’t think anything beats tactile interaction with the real thing. My observations of this afternoon suggest that it was a successful session and that the children enjoyed it and were stimulated by it. It’ll be interesting to see the evaluation sheets from the school.

Of course we have to declare an interest. Fewer and fewer students study this type of material. This is hardly surprising given that it used to be government policy to  marginalise Classics. Charles Clarke, back in 2003, said he was little concerned were the study of classics ‘to go the way of all flesh’. The number of pupils taking Latin GCSE in the state sector plummeted from about 8500 in 1988 to less than 3500 in 2004. Yet the benefits of teaching Classics have long been known. An Indianapolis survey on the effects of teaching Latin to 6^th grade children (1973) showed that after 5 months of Latin, the children had advanced 7 months in maths, 8 months in word knowledge, 9 months in problem solving, one year in reading, AND 13 months in language.

denarius of Hadrian (AD 117-138)

The session was supported by the University’s Widening Participation Department. Thanks to to Cat Lumb, Andy Fear and Irit Narkiss for organising and running the session.

Roman Finds Group Meeting at Manchester Museum 8th October 2014

Roman military diploma

The last week has been rather busy, not least because of the Roman Finds Group meeting that was held at Manchester Museum on 8th October, which I helped to organize. The group is aimed at people, museum curators, archaeologists and those who share an interest in Roman archaeology. First up was Paul Holder, who works at the University’s library and who is leading authority on Roman military diplomas. It was Paul who published Manchester Museum’s incomplete military diploma from Ravenglass, arguably awarded to a man perhaps from Heliopolis in the Lebanon who was recruited into a regiment from the Roman Army of Britain when an expeditionary force went out to help suppress the serious Judaean revolt during the reign of Hadrian in the 130s AD.

Norman Redhead talking about the recent work at Castleshaw Roman forts

Norman Redhead, County Archaeologist and Director of Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit talked about recent work at Castleshaw Roman forts. This was not the first time the site had been excavated and Norman described the various interventions at this fascinating early Roman military frontier site, which lies between Slack, near Huddersfield, and Manchester. In the 18th century the antiquary Percival sketched two forts here and the people’s poet Ammon Wrigley did some work, but the first serious archaeological work was directed by Francis Bruton over two seasons in 1907-8. Rosser and later Thompson during the late ’50s and early ’60s carried out further work for the University of Manchester, helping to clarify the relationship between the earlier and larger fort for an auxiliary cohort, and the smaller, later fortlet for a garrison for as few as 50 men. There was a community programme excavation on the site during the mid 1980s.

The earlier fort was occupied between about AD 79 and the mid-90s AD and the fortlet between 105 and the early 120s AD. This tight chronological framework means that finds from the site can be closely dated. Unfortunately the soil conditions were prejudicial to the survival of many materials. One coin of Vespasian could only be documented because its imprint had been preserved in the soil, and even samian was very abraded. Glass objects survived very well, however.  Other finds included a lava quernstone, melon beads of glass and faience, rusticated ware greyware sherds, an onyx intaglio depicting Minerva, and a little Black Burnished ware, which must have entered the North of England shortly before the fortlet was decommissioned in the 120s AD. The finds from the most recent work will go to the Saddleworth Museum. Manchester Museum has the finds from the university-led excavations.

Handsome trumpet brooch from the Knutsford hoard

Vanessa Oakden, Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme spoke about the Knutsford Hoard which was found by a metal-detectorist and included 103 coins, three trumpet brooches, finger rings and vessel fragments. Unfortunately the point of deposition had been ploughed out and the hoard dispersed but there was still a dense concentration of metalwork over some 20 x 10 metres. Some of the coins were still stuck together from their time in the container. The coins included denarii struck for Mark Anthony’s legions, and issues of Vitellius, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius and those struck for imperial ladies such as Sabina, Lucilla and Faustina II. Vanessa compared the hoard contents with another Roman hoard found at Church Minshull, which had 58 denarii and trumpet brooches. The trumpet brooches were similar to the beautiful Carmarthen brooch. The more complete brooches helped explain the rosette mount found loose in the Knutsford hoard. It looks as though the Knutsford hoard was deposited in the 190s AD. It may represent the private wealth of a soldier, landowner or merchant, and is perhaps indicative of the importance of the salt trade in the economy of the area. For further details  look this up on the Portable Antiquities database (LVPL -B44185/2012 T406).

A visit to the Manchester Museum store

The last session before lunch was presented by yours truly and I showed some of the Roman treasures from Manchester Museum’s archaeology collection, such as the Manchester word-square and talked about a couple of breakthroughs that had enabled us to provenance a previously unattributed sizeable collection of Romano-British pottery excavated by Prof.Donald Atkinson at Gayton Thorpe in Norfolk during the 1920s and a Romano-British pot from Longendale, purchased from some young lads who had found it hidden amongst some rocks. When first encountered in the store the latter shared its storage box with two unannotated small format black and white photographs showing the place of discovery and a cryptic note saying it was to be collected ‘by a gentleman’. A discussion of this acquisition turned up in an issue of Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and the mysterious gentleman turned out to be Christopher Hawkes. This presentation was followed by a visit to the Museum archaeology store where I’d got out a selection of interesting material, including small finds from Castleshaw excavations, late iron Age metalwork from Bigbury, a complete set of decorative zoomorphic feet for a box or casket and an interesting but undoubtedly fake Mithras figurine. In this I was ably assisted and supported by Irit Narkiss, a member of the Museum’s conservation team, to whom thanks are due.

Wooden combs from Vindolanda

After lunch we were treated to a wonderful talk by Barbara Birley who presented the preliminary findings of her study of wooden combs from Vindolanda. The anaerobic soil conditions preserved a range of objects made of organic materials, including textiles, leather shoes, writing tablets and the combs. Vindolanda has yielded some 140 combs and this turns out to be the largest site collection to date (Roman London has only yielded 40). Most date from c.AD 85 to the 160s. Some of the combs were marked with graffiti or stamped with a maker’s mark. Some may have been used by professional hairdressers. Some were decorated with fretting and some had a copper alloy plate. The carefully-recorded excavations allowed the combs to be plotted spatially. One particularly interesting example came with its own leather carrying pouch or case.

Gaming counters from Chester

Our next speaker, Gill Dunn, talked about recent finds from the Chester amphitheatre site. There were two phases of building and the dep0sits contained a fragment from the hilt of a sword and remains of fast food consumed by the crowds, such as swans, geese, duck, and chicken, and fish bones from salmon, eels and carp. In fact there are few sites with such a range of domestic fowl. There were pieces of ceramic portable ovens that were probably made at Holt. The glass included pieces of facet cut vessels and are indicative of relatively high status table ware. A large collection of gaming counters (above) – of particular interest to me because of the set found outside Manchester Roman fort – appear to have been redeposited from elsewhere. Metal finds included mail links, hob nails, tools, and iron finger rings.

Enamelled Romano-British metalwork

The next speaker, Justine Bayley, talked about enamelled Roman objects. Enamel is glass fused to a metal sub-strate. Enamelling occurs on small decorative objects such as brooches, belt plates, seal boxes, studs, fittings and fasteners and votive stands, and occasionally is found on larger vessels, such as the Staffordshire Moorlands pan. Sometimes larger objects were made in separate pieces and soldered together. Some were clearly made a souvenirs for people to take away with them after a posting in the province. Reconstructions of enamelled metalwork showed just how gaudy the enamelled material was originally.

Matt Ponting talking about Roman coin analysis

Our next speaker, Matt Ponting of University of Liverpool, presented results of a programme of sampling of silver Roman coins. Earlier work in this area had sampled the surface of the coins but this gave variable and misleading results because the Romans treated the coin blanks to brighten the surface. This project showed that the Julio-Claudian emperors had a fine silver coinage until Nero reduced the fineness from 93% to 80% silver. The results of the recent sampling were more consistent than earlier readings. This brought the  denarius into line with the coinage of the Greek East and resolved problems with tax collection. The speaker also showed how studying isotopes from the samples might indicate the sources of the silver that was used. Some issues can now be characterized as using Spanish silver, some Gallic. It may be possible to identify a fingerprint for recycled metal. Matt acknowledged the institutions that had allowed sampling of coins in their collections, which include the Manchester Museum.

Scan of a coin showing differences in the metal.

Our last speaker, Rob Philpott, from Liverpool Museum discussed finds from the Roman port of Meolls. In the mid 19th century Abraham Hume reported large numbers of mostly metal discoveries on the foreshore when that stretch of coastline was undergoing rapid erosion by the river.  Activity seems to have started during the later Iron Age  and there are Roman finds even before the region was absorbed into the Roman province. Meolls was an important trading centre on the edge of the tribal territory of the Cornovii, close to that of the Brigantes. The exploitation of salt in the North West may lay behind  the economic transactions that we can detect in the coins and other metalwork found at Meolls. Sadly many of Liverpool’s finds were lost during bombing in World War II but more material has been recorded from the vicinity since then, including tantalizing objects from a later period such as a St Menas flask and a small hoard of Byzantine coins. Such discoveries are often explained away as redeposited souvenirs collected by British servicemen during the first and second World Wars but in some cases the original contextual information appears impeccable. A 6th century AD context for such finds in such a location, easily accessible by water, cannot be lightly dismissed.

St Means flask

Meolls reminded me strongly of a Roman port at Faxfleet, near Brough on the Humber Estuary in East Yorkshire, where large quantities of Roman pottery dating from the later 1st and early 2nd centuries AD was found. Its location close to the confluence of  a number of tributaries flowing into the Humber would have made it a useful location for trade. Unlike Meolls, most of the material found was ceramic. Another site further along the estuary at Redcliff, like Meolls, shows evidence of Roman trade some decades before the Romans came to northern Britain.

There was a great mix of papers at this meeting and my thanks to all those who presented or helped with the day.

Napoleon’s Jailor’s Archaeology Collection at Manchester Museum

Sir Thomas Reade (1782-1849) from The Reades of Blackwood Hill

This morning I received an email enquiry from a student at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris asking about a vessel that was once belonged to Sir Thomas Reade that is in the collection at Manchester  Museum. He had seen a reference in Jean Paul Morel’s  Céramique Hellénistique et Romaines II  (p. 281). Unfortunately the University Library doesn’t appear to have a copy of this book so I couldn’t check the reference but a quick search on our collection documentation system showed that we have no less than 75 pots – mostly Roman lamps – from this collector. Many of them come from Cape Bon and Cape Demaz,  and there’s a bowl from Thapsus, in Tunisia.

Roman lamp from Cape Demaz, Tunis, from the Thomas Reade Collection at Manchester Museum

I couldn’t find any references to Sir Thomas Reade in the Annual Reports published by the Museum and decided to look up Sir Thomas on the internet and came across quite a lot of biographical information about him because he was something of a celebrity in his time. It turns out he was one of the jailors of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte after his abdication and confinement on the island of St Helena. I learnt that Sir Thomas was a local man. He was born in Congleton in 1782. There is a carved marble memorial to him in St Peter’s Church, Congleton, Cheshire. It is interesting that this memorial is flanked on either side by a representation of an amphora or storage vessel.

One of the objects from the Thomas Reade Collection at Manchester Museum

In 1799 he ran away from home to enlist in the army. He took part in campaigns in Holland, Egypt and America, distinguished himself in Italy and Sicily, and was given a knighthood in 1815, when he was only thirty-three. He travelled to St Helena in the South Atlantic on 29 January 1816 and there he served as jailer to the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been exiled to the island following the Battle of Waterloo. After the death of Napoleon in 1821, Reade returned to England and in 1824 he was appointed Consul-General of Tunis. In this diplomatic post he helped persuade the Bey or ruler of Tunis to abolish slavery. Reade served in Tunis until his death in 1849. Reade’s influential position at Tunis enabled him to collect Carthaginian and Romano-African antiquities, and he carried out some excavations amongst the ruins of Carthage. He removed a bi-lingual inscription, now in the British Museum, from a Libyo-Phoenician monument at Dougga, sadly damaging it in the process. He also collected manuscripts.

Sir Thomas Reade collection: Roman bowl with copperplate handwritten label

The student at the Ecole du Louvre emailed me to say he found information about objects in Sir Thomas Reade’s collection in the auction catalogue Curious Carthagenian Antiquities, marbles, valuable porphyry columns, fragments, terra cottas (A catalogue of antiquities which will be sold by T. Winstanley and Sons on  the 18th of February, 1850, etc. [With plates.] MS. Prices, Thomas Winstanley & Co, Liverpool : Baines & Herbert, [1850]).  An 1857 catalogue of the Manchester Natural History Museum does mention Carthaginian antiquities but doesn’t refer to Sir Thomas Reade, so it is not at all clear that Sir Thomas’ collection came to Manchester Museum when the Manchester Natural History Society transferred its collection to Owens College (the predecessor of University of Manchester).

Introducing the collection to our VSAs

 

 

 

 

Worsley Man Anniversary

Talking to staff about Worsley Man at Manchester Museum

It was my turn to lead this morning’s gallery tour and by a particular piece of serendipity it turned out that the anniversary of the subject I selected last year actually falls today. The head of  Worsley Man was found  on 18th August 1958.  The remains were found by John Connelly as he was walling peat blocks in an isolated spot just inside the Worsley boundary, about two miles from Astley Green village. Worsley Moss is part of the Chat Moss pet bog complex in Salford.

As with the better preserved body of Lindow Man (also discovered in the month of August  – the 30th anniversary of the discovery has just passed), the head was thought to be that of a relatively recent murder victim and police spent five days searching the surrounding 252 acres (100 ha) of the moss but without finding any further remains. Incidentally we’d be very interested to talk to any retired police officers who took part in the search of Worsley Moss. There was a Coroner’s Inquest but when tests revealed that the head was not recent the rather grisly discovery was transferred to the University of Manchester. The remains were displayed in a perspex box at the Museum of the Pathology Department at the Manchester Medical School.

It was only after the discovery of Lindow Man in August 1984, that the head of Worsley Man attracted archaeological interest. Worsley Man was 20-30 years old and showed signs of having died violently: there was a wound behind the right ear, a fracture on top of the skull, a garotte around his neck and one of the vertebrae had been sliced when he was decapitated. Radiocarbon-dating placed Worsley Man around 100-200 AD.

CT scan of Worsley Man (courtesy of Manchester Hospitals Judith Adams)

A couple years ago a group of researchers from Universities of Manchester and Leicester began looking at Worsley Man again, and with the help of Prof Judith Adams of Manchester Hospitals were able to carry out a CT scan of the head. This showed that  there was a previously unknown third vertebra in the flesh underneath the skull.

Last autumn Worsley Man was scanned again at the Materials Science Department to investigate the injuries in more detail. This work was the subject of a documentary that was broadcast earlier in the year.  The members of the Worsley Man team who took part had to sign a non-disclosure agreement until the programme had been shown on TV. It is unfortunate that we were unable to study the scans and consult other members of the team before having to make a comment on camera about the scans.

Scan showing the three remaining vertebrae of Worsley Man

Worsley Man: vertebrae and styloid process (in light blue on right hand side of scan)

A piece of bone deep in the flesh of Worsley Man looked like the point of a bone tipped spear, similar to examples found in Iron Age cemeteries in East Yorkshire but in retrospect this is much more likely to be the styloid process of the skull. However, it was till worthwhile doing the scans because they revealed details such as there are two planes where the third vertebra had been chopped. These and a previously unseen nick on the mandible and the fractures on top of the skull show that Worsley Man died violently.

If the rest of the body had been found, there might be further evidence of  injuries. Although the police searched Worsley moss for five days in 1958 they didn’t find any more remains. However, this does not mean that there were no remains to be found. It was an extensive search area, the people involved weren’t archaeologists, and seeing remains in these circumstances is by no means an easy task, as the account of the finding of Lindow Man’s remains by Rick Turner in 1984 shows.

Scan of skull showing tooth and staples from 1950s autopsy

No further detail of the ligature was seen on the scans because the material out of which the ligature was made and the tissue of the neck are so similar  that we cannot differentiate between them. In fact it may possibly be the case that the ligature is part of the neck tissue.

One further piece of work to be done is isotopic analysis of tooth enamel to determine if possible where Worsley man came from. This might tell us whether Worsley Man was a local or an in-comer. If the radiocarbon date is correct in placing Worsley man in the 2nd century AD, he can hardly be a prisoner-of-war unless this happened during one of the periodic rebellions against Roman rule that took place in northern Britain. However, if (and it is a big if) we follow Rene Girard’s sacrificial theory, the scapegoating of victims during a time of crisis only ‘works’ if the victim is a member of the community caught up in the ‘sacrificial crisis’, so we ought to expect isotopic analysis to show he was a local not an outsider.

It seems that each new analysis raises further questions. Oh well, see you in the gallery same time next year!

Sam and Tristan looking at the results

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Young Archaeologists Dig at Castleshaw

The path up to Castleshaw

It was a very wet day when I met members of Manchester Museum’s Young Archaeologists Club in the car park opposite the site of the Roman fort site at Castleshaw near Oldham last Saturday. Despite the weather, it was too good an opportunity to miss because the site is currently the subject of a four week community archaeology excavation, which is funded mainly by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

For those who are not familiar with the site, the fort was made of  turf and timber fort and was built around AD 79. It was abandoned about 15 years later but the Roman army returned to the site around AD 105 and erected a smaller fortlet, which in turn was abandoned after about 20 years. In the 1980s Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit (GMAU) led a project to investigate and landscape the site of the fortlet. More recently, attention has turned to the remains of the larger fort which are poorly understand and difficult to access. Features uncovered so far during the excavations include an extensive area of the Roman road exiting the east gate, the east gate itself, defensive ditches, internal roads and barrack blocks, a  workshop area overlying prehistoric features, and a 17^th century cottage.

17th century cottage converted into a cow byre

I understand that around 300 school children, 150 adult volunteers and various special groups are involved in the project which is being led by the Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts supported by a small team of professional archaeologists. The dig finishes on Friday 1^st August so the Young Archaeologists Club visit last Saturday was a rare chance to see the excavations in progress before the trenches were backfilled. Incidentally, given that the vast majority of parents naturally  want to encourage their children to do well at school, one way of helping them is to register them for membership of the Young Archaeologists Club. One former member recently told me that his time in the Manchester YAC had a huge influence on his  interests and particularly on his desire to study archaeology at university and his enjoyment of History and Classics at A-level. He said the excavations he did with YAC at sites around Manchester were so exciting and inspiring for him, as well as the other events organised.at the Museum.

Young archaeologists digging at Castleshaw

The Young Archaeologists from Manchester Museum were allocated a section of a trench where the Roman road inside the fort had been exposed and cleaned. The photograph above shows the youngsters lined up and trowelling back from the cleaned Roman road surface. This was till within the plough soil and so the pieces of pottery that they found tended to be of post-medieval date. There on the surface I found a sherd of mustard yellow slipware with two concentric ribs, probably dating from the 17th century.

2000-year-old turves still showing in the rampart section

After seeing some of the objects that had already been found the Young Archaeologists were treated to a tour of the site with site Director Norman Redhead. In one of the trenches Norman showed us the section of the Roman rampart with dark linear stains. These were the tell-tale marks left by turves that the Roman soldiers had cut and stacked one on top of the other to create a defensive rampart. It’s amazing to think they are still clearly visible after some 2000 years.

Looking at finds afterwards

In view of the appalling weather and following site tour the Young Archaeologists decided that discretion was the better part of valour and finished early. Our sincerest thanks to Norman and everyone else who enabled the Young Archaeologists to go out and experience this truly wonderful piece of Roman frontier archaeology.

 

 

Roman Finds Group Meeting at Manchester Museum 8th October 2014

Enamelled buckle from Barton Street, Manchester

 

The Roman Finds Group is holding its next day meeting at Manchester Museum on Wednesday 8th October 2014. The theme of the conference will be Finds from Manchester and the North West. At the time of writing we expect the speakers will include:

 

Paul Holder (University of Manchester) – Recent finds of Roman Military Diplomas from Britain

Norman Redhead (Greater Manchester Archaeology Advisory Service) – Finds from Castleshaw Roman Fort

Vanessa Oakden (P.A.S.) – Finds beneath our Fields: The Knutsford Hoard

Bryan Sitch (Manchester Museum) – Manchester Museum collections

Barbara Birley (Vindolanda Trust) – Keeping up appearances: the wooden hair combs from Vindolanda

Gill Dunn – Recent finds from Chester focusing on finds from the amphitheatre

Justine Bayley – Enamelled Roman objects

Matthew Ponting (University of Liverpool) – Recent analysis of Roman coins (title tbc)

Rob Philpott -(Liverpool Museums) Roman finds from Meols on the North Wirral shore

 

Brougham patera

Some details are still to be confirmed but we’re hoping to also have presentations about the Roman salt-working industry in the region, recent analyses of Roman coins, and finds from excavations in Manchester. If you missed the earlier call for papers and have something you’d like to talk about, get in touch with Bryan Sitch now as it may still be possible to fit you into the programme.

The Roman military diploma from Ravenglass in Manchester Museum’s archaeology collection

The day will start with registration and coffee from 9.30am and the first talk at 10.00am. A relatively long lunch break is planned so there will be time to see material in the reserve collection as well as exploring the museum and finding something to eat.

For more information and bookings please contact Bryan Sitch, Deputy Head of Collections, Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL (bryan.sitch@manchester.ac.uk). All bookings must be made before 3rd October but as places are limited early booking is advised. Cost: £15 for RFG members and students and £20 for others (includes tea and coffee but not lunch); cheques should be made payable to the Roman Finds Group.

The final programme will appear on the RFG website nearer the time, and will then be emailed to all those who have booked for the day.