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07/08/2010
I dreamt about coins and pots last night, unsurprisingly. Anna and I were on site just after 8am and began the exciting part of lifting the fragments of inverted vessel before Alan started on the main part of the pot. The fabric is black burnished ware and it really is a pot of beauty. Alan is half-sectioning the pot and taking the coins out in layers. As the coins were coming out (it felt very strange and un-archaeological to be taking handfuls of coins and dumping them in bags!) Anna and I were checking which emperors we had – Gallienus, Claudius II, Tacitus, Maximian, Probus (there seemed a lot of him), but as yet no Carausius…
Naomi and her husband Simon called by (having had to miss the first day at a conference), and Simon swiftly pointed out our missing piece of pot from yesterday was actually not missing at all, it was just that a fragment had slipped downwards. Relief all round, especially from Alan who had been feeling very bad about losing a piece!
Steve Minnitt from the Somerset County Museum spent most of the afternoon with us, as well as the landowner’s brother-in-law.
My hands are stained brown/ green from the copper-infused clayey soil. While Anna and Alan took turns excavating the coins I bagged up the different layers and stored them in archive boxes. Each finds bag took maybe between 500 and 800 coins. The boxes could not hold more than four bags for fear of spinal damage! Dave and I spent a while guestimating how many coins per bag multiplied by the number of boxes but soon gave up. How could we possibly guess?
At the end of Day 2 it is clear there will be a Day 3 tomorrow. It is Saturday tomorrow and Anna and I are due to help the Avon & Gloucs FLO at a rally near Bristol on Sunday. We really hope the hoard will be out by then!
07/08/2010
I wasn’t officially working today, but I couldn’t resist going back to the site with my partner and his kids. On the way there Anna texted me a picture – it was the bottom of the pot! They had finally found it. It seems a little taller than it is wide – will it beat the Cunetio hoard to be the biggest coin hoard from the country? By the time we arrived at the site almost all the coins had been removed. Dave arrived shortly after – in the nick of time, having had to work that morning. Alan’s partner, son and dog were also there as well as two archaeologist friends of his, and the landowner’s sister and her husband. When finally the last piece of pot was lifted out we all cheered! It was pretty amazing to see the original pit that had been dug at the end of the 3rd century.
As the hole was being backfilled (the kids were brilliantly enthusiastic with the shovels, then relayed and jumped up and down on the turf so it looked as if we’d never even been there!) Dave chucked a couple of modern coins into the hole. It felt really weird waving goodbye to everyone and driving away – for three days a field in Somerset has been all I could think about, and now it is time to share that story with the wider world.
07/08/2010
Katie – Day one
What a day! Its 8pm and I’ve just got home. Anna and I met up with Dave and his grandson Aaron, and Alan Graham, the archaeologist Naomi had organised to excavate the hoard. We thought we would have a hoard in a pot by the end of today, but it soon became clear when Alan began clearing the soil from around the top of the pot that what Dave and we had thought was the rim of the pot, was in fact the base of an inverted vessel on top of the pot, and fitted neatly inside the rim. Which means it is one big pot! I made a quick phone call to Wiltshire Heritage Museum this afternoon when it became clear the pot was roughly 50cm in diameter. WHM houses the pot from the biggest coin hoard in the country (54,952 late 3rd century coins from the Roman town of Cunetio near Marlborough). Dianne, the Fundraising Officer, nipped off with a ruler and measured the Cunetio pot for me – 50cm in diameter!!! My mind is racing with visions of coins. I rang Sam Moorhead from the middle of the field – he sounded in shock and kept saying ‘can you see any Carausian coins?’ (the so-called rebel emperor AD 286-293).
The difficult decision of the day however was how on earth to get these coins out of the ground. If we lifted en bloc, it would be a mammoth task (Sam guessed it would weigh a ton, no joke intended) and very expensive. Plus, as it would then have to be excavated in laboratory conditions, it could take a while before we knew what was in there. The decision was taken, with help from Bob Croft (Somerset County Archaeologist) who had called by and Roger Bland on the phone, that we would take the coins out in layers. Sam was keen to see whether there was any differentiation between the date of the coins at the top to those at the bottom. In other words, had this pot represented some sort of bank over the years. It was clear anyway that the pot could not have been lowered into the pit with the coins inside as it would have been far too heavy.
Another facinating discovery is that the pot was packed around with reeds of some kind. They are not weaved, but they are clearly placed. The pot is cracked and almost intact one small piece appears to be missing. Anna, Dave, Aaron and I spent a good hour hunting through the spoil but to no avail. Dave and Aaron are camping out tonight, right next to the pit. Can’t get better security than that!
07/08/2010
Anna – Hoards of hoards…
15.04.10
Katie gave me a ring about the hoard as soon as she found out. When I heard her on the other end of the phone I at first assumed she was ringing about the rally we were attending in Wiltshire that weekend, so the news about the hoards came as a bit of a surprise!
“A local metal detectorist, Dave, has found a dispersed hoard of Roman silver coins in the entrance to a field. And you’ll never guess what… When he went further into the field he then found what he thinks is the top of a Roman bronze coin hoard in a pot!!!”.
“Two hoards in one field! Do we know anything about the size of the bronze one”, I asked?
“Not really, he’s been great and covered it straight up before calling me. We know that the coins are third century radiates though and he’s kept a few along with some bits of broken pot that were lying in the soil”.
I was amazed that the finder had acted so responsibly and promptly. What a challenge it must have been to leave his find lying in a field! Although he had covered it up really well to ensure the spot remained hidden, we knew that we had to investigate the site as soon as possible. So after saying goodbye to Katie I quickly called my colleagues at Somerset County Council’s Historic Environment Service (HES), Bob Croft (County Archaeologist) and Naomi Payne (Historic Environment Officer), to deliver the exciting news.
Luckily they were the position to help us by employing an independent archaeologist experienced in excavation, Alan Graham, to help us excavate the site if needs be. This was fantastic news as we knew that very few coin hoards had been properly excavated before, so we wanted to make the best of the opportunity that had been presented to us.
A time when Dave, Katie, Alan and I were all free was agreed upon and we arranged to meet at the site first thing the following Thursday…
07/08/2010
While the hoard is being washed and counted at the British Museum, over here we are keen to find out more about the site in which it was found. So a geophysical survey was carried out on the field today. This is a non-invasive type of survey often used by archaeologists to build up a picture of archaeological features below the surface of the ground (on this occasion by using a fluxgate magnometer to measure magnetic anomalies). A company called Geophysical Surveys Bradford (GSB), were employed to carry out the survey and me and Dave arranged to meet them on site.
However, their preliminary findings showed virtually nothing! Apparently they detected one or two anomalies, but nothing that you wouldn’t expect in your average field. This didn’t come as much of a surprise to be honest as, although there is evidence of Roman occupation in the surrounding region, Dave tells me he’s found very little apart from the two hoards in the field despite a thorough search.
Although we were slightly disappointed by these results, they still help us to build up a picture of the original landscape in which the hoard was buried. So we now know that the hoards weren’t buried next to a settlement, but in the middle of nowhere!
07/08/2010
Hoard declared Treasure by coroner
On 22 July, the hoard was declared to be Treasure at a coroner’s inquest in Frome. It will now be valued by the Treasure Valuation Committee at their meeting in October and the Committee has commissioned valuations from two of the leading trade experts in Roman coins.
A selection of coins from the hoard was put on show in Frome library on the 22nd and over 2,000 people came to see the coins and hear Sam Moorhead, Roger Bland, Anna Booth and Katie Hinds talk about them.
Roger says:
We were all amazed and greatly encouraged at the huge interest shown by the people of Frome in this hoard and hope to work with Somerset County Council Heritage Service on arranging more events like this in the county. At the moment we are only at the start of the project to study the hoard. Although all the coins have been washed and identified by emperor, many thousands are unidentified and it will be a year’s work for a conservator to clean all the coins. At present we trying to raise the funding for this. Once the valuation of the hoard has been agreed, Somerset County Council Heritage Service will need to raise the funding to acquire the hoard for Somerset. British Museum Press are publishing a small book on the hoard in order to help the fundraising campaign.
Sam said:
‘It is wonderful that a new discovery can generate so much interest. It shows that the public have a thirst to see and hear about major new finds. Furthermore, having over 2,000 people (including two groups of school children) come in person to look at the coins will have an enormous impact on the local community and its engagement with history. There is no doubt that Britain’s forgotten emperor, Carausius, is now beginning to enter the psyche of people who have been following the media reports on the hoard. The Portable Antiquities Scheme might have a major responsibility to record new finds by the public, but it also plays a crucial role in the wider dissemination of knowledge about the past. Has any coin hoard ever generated this much interest in the past? I don’t think so.’