Tres de los estados de oro descubiertos en el hueso de vaca en Sedgeford en 2003 Foto: JOHN HOCKNELL
El tesoro de Hoxne
El tesoro más grande de plata y oro de la época tardorromana encontrado en Gran Bretaña estaba en la frontera de Suffolk-Norfolk, en Hoxne en 1992. El detector de metales Eric Lawes era el hombre a quien agradecer. Fue enterrado en una caja de roble cuidadosamente embalada.
En el tesoro había, respiro hondo, 14.865 monedas romanas de oro, plata y bronce y unas 200 piezas de vajilla de plata y joyas de oro, incluida una cadena de oro para el cuerpo. Al año siguiente, el Comité de Valoración del Tesoro calculó que todo valía 1,75 millones de libras esterlinas.
Cuando BBC Radio 4 emitió su popular serie A History of the World en 100 Objects hace casi una década, el Museo Británico nominó un artículo encontrado en Hoxne: un pimentero con la forma de una mujer noble romana.
The programme website said: “Only a very wealthy family could have owned such treasures. We do not know the identity of the person who buried it but several objects are inscribed with the name Aurelius Ursicinus.”
The Snettisham Treasure
Este rincón de Norfolk tiene el tesoro que sigue dando. En realidad, técnicamente es una serie de al menos una docena de tesoros que componen The Snettisham Treasure.
El Museo Británico califica de “espectaculares” seis décadas de descubrimientos en estas tierras cercanas a Sandringham, y no se equivoca. Los tesoros (grupos de objetos colocados juntos en el suelo) nos han dado el mayor depósito de artículos de oro, plata y bronce, que datan de la Edad del Hierro, jamás encontrado en Europa.
La mayor parte fue enterrada entre el 100 y el 60 a. Pésalo todo y supera la balanza con más de 40 kg, y está bellamente hecho.
Hay más de 200 torques (adornos circulares que se llevan alrededor del cuello y están hechos de metales preciosos o bronce), aproximadamente la misma cantidad de monedas y más de 100 lingotes (bloques de metal) para pulseras y anillos.
Speaking of Iron Age neckwear, East Anglia is pretty much Torc Central. More have been found here than in any other region – most of them in hoards.
Mind you, a rare tubular gold torc – one of the first Snettisham discoveries, late in 1948 – was initially thought to be a piece of a brass bedstead…
The Mildenhall Treasure
Here’s another Roman biggie close to the Suffolk-Norfolk border (and Cambridgeshire, come to that). It comes with a nice, if naïve, story.
The find was actually in a field at West Row, a few miles outside Mildenhall, in 1942.
The duo responsible were ploughman Gordon Butcher and his employer, agricultural engineer Sydney Ford.
Work continuing at the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project excavations in Norfolk in 2003, following the discovery of ancient gold coins Picture: John Hocknell
Sydney, who collected local antiquities, took the treasures home… and put them on show on the sideboard.
In the spring of 1946, a local amateur antiquarian visited Sydney and saw the collection. Some pieces were dispatched for analysis to prove to the collector they were made of silver, not pewter.
Today, the British Museum says about the objects: “The Mildenhall Treasure, a large hoard of Roman silver vessels of the fourth century AD, is one of the most iconic finds from Roman Britain.”
The items were declared treasure trove at an inquest in Bury St Edmunds that year, and the collection was acquired by the British Museum, where “it became an overnight sensation when it was first displayed… and has since remained hugely popular”.
The museum explains: “The artistic and technical quality of the silver objects is outstanding, and though we do not know who owned them, it was probably a person or family of considerable wealth and high social status…
“Much of the decoration relates to the mythology and worship of Bacchus, the god of wine, a theme that was very popular on silver tableware throughout the Roman period.”
The “Great Dish”, an intensely-decorated circular platter weighing more than 8kg, has become the emblem of the Mildenhall Treasure. It’s also known as the Neptune or Oceanus dish.
“Bacchic imagery had a long history in Greek and Roman art, and this example, on a magnificent silver vessel, is one of the finest to survive from the late-Roman period.”
The Thetford hoard
Detectorist Arthur Brooks found a hoard of Roman-British metalwork at Gallows Hill, near Thetford, in November, 1979 – items that later found a home in the British Museum.
The artefacts were dated to the mid-to-late years of the 4th Century. They included 33 silver spoons and three silver strainers; 22 gold rings; five gold-chain necklaces; four gold bracelets; four necklace pendants; a gold amulet; an emerald bead, and a gold belt-buckle adorned with a dancing satyr.
The Honingham hoard
Back in 1954, a local farmer and his employees were harvesting a crop of sugar beet about eight miles west-ish of Norwich when they found a collection of 341 silver Iron Age coins and the bottom of a small Roman pot.
The coins were found to have belonged to the Iceni people. The theory was that they’d been buried in about 60AD, when Boudicca led her tribe’s rebellion against Roman rule.
The Scole hoard
Excavations of land where a housing estate was due to be built found a number of items all thought to be Roman: shards of pottery, some coins, and objects made from iron and copper alloy. There were also the footings for houses.
Coins and pieces of pottery from the Iron Age were found, too.
Then in 1982 and 1983, when the new houses were being built, workers found 202 silver Iceni coins and 87 Roman ones. There were also four skeletons of people thought to have lived in the 3rd Century.
The Sedgeford hoard
When you find a muddy cow’s bone that appears to be full of gold coins, you want to check it out. Which is how, in the summer of 2003, amateur archaeologist Chris Mackie took it to a hospital in King’s Lynn and asked to have it x-rayed.
The bone found at Sedgeford, near Heacham, contained 20 gold coins dating from the 1st Century. Nineteen other coins were found nearby on the Iron Age site. All the coins featured a stylized horse and appeared to have been buried when they were fairly new.
They were known as Gallo-Belgic E staters, made probably in northern France. It was thought they might have been brought back to Britain by soldiers or mercenaries.
The Wickham Market hoard
It should really be the Dallinghoo hoard, since the 840 Iron Age gold staters (a kind of coin) were found in a field in the village near Wickham Market in 2008.
Car mechanic and detectorist Michael Darke made the breakthrough, finding his first gold coin in a quarter of a century of metal-detecting in the area.
Más tarde regresó, encontró ocho más y luego su máquina registró un hallazgo importante. Michael desenterró 774 monedas más.
Siguió una excavación importante. En total, se encontraron 840 monedas. Casi todos habían sido acuñados en East Anglia por la tribu Iceni; una pareja vino de Lincolnshire.
Unos años más tarde, el Museo de Ipswich compró las monedas por 316.000 libras esterlinas.
El tesoro de Cookley
En el verano de 2018, un detector de metales encontró 60 monedas romanas en un campo cerca de Halesworth.
El tesoro descubierto en Cookley constaba de 58 monedas de plata maciza y un par de copias plateadas. Los denarios fueron fechados en un período del 153 a. C. y del 60 al 61 d. C. Algunos se hicieron durante los reinados de emperadores como Augusto, Calígula y Nerón.
La experta Dra. Anna Booth consideró que podrían haber estado ocultos durante la revuelta contra los romanos dirigida por Boudicca.
