Britain's Last Roman Hoards: Wealth, Power and Culture in the Fifth Century

英国最后的罗马宝藏：五世纪的财富、权力和文化

• 批准号: AH/Y000234/1
• 负责人: Ellen Swift
• 金额: $ 72.87万
• 依托单位: University of Kent
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FY000234%2F1
• 关键词: Britain; Last; Roman; Hoards; Wealth

'Some they hid in the earth...and some they carried away' declares the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one of England's early medieval texts. It tells the story of what happened to precious hoards of treasure when Britain's Roman rulers abandoned the island in the early fifth century. Surprisingly, these Roman hoards do exist and are one of the most fascinating and important survivals of the period, 'hid in the earth', and never recovered by their owners. Of the 250+ recorded examples, around half survive today. They can be found in museum collections across the UK and are the subject of our research project. The hoards provide crucial evidence for the late Roman to early medieval transition period in Britain (end 4th to mid-late 5th century). In general, few objects survive from this time. Because it was a period of political and economic crisis, there was a dramatic drop in the availability of many goods and so we have much less artefact evidence than we do for other periods. It makes the hoards especially important: collectively, they contain thousands of coins, and hundreds of other artefacts. Their study has the potential to transform our understanding of this time- a potential not realised until now.Remarkably, these last Roman hoards from Britain are neglected in scholarly research. Many are unpublished or only partly published; others need re-evaluation. Most of the hoards include Roman silver coins, and/or items of precious jewellery and sometimes their burial containers are preserved. The non-coin artefacts from the hoards have been overlooked, especially the containers, which are virtually unstudied. There is also scope for fresh study of the coins. In this collaborative project we study the hoards as complete assemblages, bringing together a team of scholars who specialise in researching the different types of material. The research makes use of methods including close observation and recording of the objects, scientific analysis of their metal composition, and multivariate analysis to evaluate patterns in the data. Our project will establish new dating for the hoards that will help us understand the breakdown of the monetary system in Britain and how coins were used in this crucial transition period. Study of the non-coin artefacts from the hoards will help with dating by providing independent evidence, as well as wider data to evaluate questions of wealth, power and culture in the 5th century. We also need a new approach to the interpretation of Roman hoards. The principal debate among scholars, on why hoards were buried in the ground, has become stale. To revitalise the topic, we shift the focus of research away from the reasons for deposition. Instead, we examine how these artefacts and assemblages functioned more widely before burial, in end-4th and 5th-century society, and what they tell us about it. A key goal is to consider the individual and collective uses of artefacts from treasure collections in economic (and other) exchange. Who were the individuals and groups in society wealthy enough to collect these treasures, and what were their purposes? What do the individual objects and collective assemblages tell us about people's wealth and power, their daily lives, the survival of craft practices after the political and economic collapse of Roman Britain, and cultural connections between Britain and places beyond? To give an example of the potential, the Principal Investigator's initial research on a hoard from Thetford suggests it was buried not in the last decades of the 4th century, but towards the mid-5th century, much later than previously thought, and long after the end of Roman rule in Britain. Such a late date for this apparently 'Roman' hoard has profound implications for our understanding of 5th-century Britain. It means we need to re-evaluate both our evidence base for the period, and established thinking about the transition between Roman state collapse and the development of early medieval kingdoms.

英国中世纪早期文献之一《盎格鲁-撒克逊编年史》宣称：“有些人藏在地下……有些人被带走了”。它讲述了五世纪初英国罗马统治者放弃该岛时，珍贵宝藏的去向。令人惊讶的是，这些罗马宝藏确实存在，并且是那个时期最令人着迷和最重要的遗迹之一，“隐藏在地下”，并且从未被它们的主人找回。在 250 多个有记录的例子中，大约有一半幸存至今。它们可以在英国各地的博物馆收藏中找到，也是我们研究项目的主题。这些宝藏为英国罗马晚期到中世纪早期过渡时期（四世纪末至五世纪中后期）提供了重要证据。一般来说，很少有物体从这个时期幸存下来。因为那是一个政治和经济危机时期，许多商品的供应量急剧下降，因此我们拥有的文物证据比其他时期少得多。这使得这些宝藏变得尤为重要：它们总共包含数千枚硬币和数百件其他文物。他们的研究有可能改变我们对这一时期的理解——这一潜力直到现在才得以实现。值得注意的是，这些来自英国的最后罗马宝藏在学术研究中被忽视了。许多尚未发表或仅部分发表；其他人需要重新评估。大多数宝藏包括罗马银币和/或贵重珠宝，有时它们的陪葬容器也被保存下来。宝藏中的非硬币文物被忽视了，尤其是容器，几乎没有被研究过。对硬币也有新的研究空间。在这个合作项目中，我们将这些宝藏作为完整的组合进行研究，汇集了专门研究不同类型材料的学者团队。该研究采用的方法包括仔细观察和记录物体、对其金属成分进行科学分析以及多元分析来评估数据中的模式。我们的项目将为这些宝藏建立新的年代，这将帮助我们了解英国货币体系的崩溃以及硬币在这个关键过渡时期的使用方式。对宝藏中的非硬币文物的研究将有助于通过提供独立证据以及更广泛的数据来评估 5 世纪的财富、权力和文化问题，从而进行年代测定。我们还需要一种新的方法来解释罗马宝库。学者们关于为什么将宝藏埋在地下的主要争论已经变得陈旧。为了重振这个话题，我们将研究焦点从沉积原因上转移开。相反，我们研究这些文物和组合在埋葬之前、在四世纪末和五世纪的社会中如何更广泛地发挥作用，以及它们告诉我们什么。一个关键目标是考虑经济（和其他）交换中珍藏文物的个人和集体使用。社会上哪些个人和团体有足够的钱来收集这些宝藏，他们的目的是什么？这些单独的物品和集体组合告诉我们什么关于人们的财富和权力、他们的日常生活、罗马英国政治和经济崩溃后手工艺实践的生存以及英国与其他地方之间的文化联系？举个例子来说明这种潜力，首席研究员对塞特福德的一件宝藏的初步研究表明，它不是在 4 世纪的最后几十年被埋藏的，而是在 5 世纪中叶，比之前想象的要晚得多，而且是在罗马对不列颠的统治结束。这批显然是“罗马”宝藏的年代如此之晚，对于我们对 5 世纪英国的理解具有深远的影响。这意味着我们需要重新评估这一时期的证据基础，以及关于罗马国家崩溃和中世纪早期王国发展之间过渡的既定思维。