BEHIND THE DIG : RETURN TO THE VIKING FIELD
Women in History, Biblical Rain, and Viking?
We are lucky here in Lincolnshire that the vast wealth of trade routes possessed by our county, from the two major Roman roads, the River Trent, the Foss Dyke and the connection to Europe through the North Sea, attracted a whole wealth of history upon our agricultural lands. We’ve certainly been invaded just a few times and have experienced life from the Celts to the Romans, the Anglo Saxons, the Vikings and of course the Normans who built our grand Cathedral.
With our latest addition of Viking hack silver we’ve just about found a little piece of every civilisation here in this rural village that on a Digging Wednesday we fondly like to call home. Today our field of choice is known as ‘Roman Field 1’, our secret code for ‘we find a lot of Roman in here’. We did think we were old friends who knew each other very well but the last visit here held a few surprises for us, from Viking hack silver to our first ever Roman Empress. It seems the old field still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Of course we will be heading straight to the Viking spot to kick off the day, we’d be stupid not to.
There’s just one small, little problem with today’s Digging Wednesday. The weather forecast. It hasn’t really been looking good all week and a glance at the forecast this morning only further puts a rather wet outlook on the day as biblical rain is predicted continuously from around 2pm. Oh well, those of you who know us well know that there’s no such thing as a fair weather detectorist here, and definitely not when we’ve got the scent of Viking.
It hasn’t really been looking good all week and a glance at the forecast this morning only further puts a rather wet outlook on the day as biblical rain is predicted continuously from around 2pm.
Excitement, optimism and spirits are high as we chance across our first signal just a few paces into the Viking spot. A delicate Medieval strap end. An artefact that prevented the fraying to a loose end of fabric, much like the hard plastic ends protect the ends of your hoodie cord. However in Medieval England such an item was a luxury, as at this time clothing was generally worn for necessity, comfort and display and one of the only opportunities for the display of class and wealth was through the choice of materials and decorations. In particular these metal decorations as it did indeed matter how fancy your strap ends were.
Yet, if you were from the lower classes then the system was already working against you as your clothing was considered in order to decide how much tax you should pay, so maybe fancy strap ends aren’t the best idea. Therefore this strap end is a very simple design where the copper sheet would have been folded around the end of a strip of fabric and then riveted into place through the drilled hole present in the circular top attachment, it would have been one of the cheapest types that could be purchased, but still a bit of flash for your humble peasant.
A fallen horseman variety, a coin reverse that is one of the most violent Roman Coin types ever minted.
It’s not too long either before the Roman Field makes itself known and the first Roman appears under Ellie’s pinpointer. A fallen horseman variety, a coin reverse that is one of the most violent Roman Coin types ever minted. Struck under Constantius II it shows a desperate moment of slaughter and death as a barbarian lying fallen over his horse reaches back in vain towards the Roman soldier standing over him thrusting a spear towards his heart.
It might surprise you to discover that this particularly violent imagery was actually a favourite of Constantius II. An Emperor whose reign saw constant warfare on the borders against barbarians but rather ironically he operated a relatively defensive foreign policy which received much criticism at the time as many in the Roman Empire were obsessed with the idea of conquest and expansion. Yet Constantius, facing lots of interior struggles such as Civil Wars within the Empire itself chose instead to conserve military strength. Maybe he preferred this coin reverse as it projected a strong military image to the critics against him.
There were over 50,000 of these different varieties of Roman coin types produced over the course of the Roman Empire and the next type to emerge a couple of metres later couldn’t be more contrasting to the harsh violence of the last. The gentle imagery of the Goddess Pietas standing nursing a child that was minted under the Roman Empress Flavia Maximiana Theodora. Theodora was actually the replacement for Constantius’s wife Helena the Empress from our previous visit. You see Constantius divorced Helena, who was a woman from humble origins, and married Theodora, a woman much more fitting for his rising status.
Women in Ancient Rome lacked any voice in public life, as well as in history, the ideal Roman woman was a matron who spun her own cloth, oversaw her family’s affairs, provided her husband with children, food and a well-run household, and of course displayed suitable modesty. With Pietas on the reverse of Theodora’s coin the strongest tale that we learn about her is simply that she was the perfect maternal wife. Rather different in comparison to the coin of Helena’s which features the Goddess Pax, the goddess of peace, imagery chosen to reflect her important religious work, after all Helena is a verified saint and is credited with discovering Christ’s true cross. Maybe Constantius made quite the wrong decision casting her aside.
After half an hour of absolutely torrential rain, much more sensible and less stubborn detectorists would have probably gone home by now.
2 Roman Coins and a lovely Medieval Strap End in and it quickly became apparent that we couldn’t escape from the forecast for too long. We are in Lincolnshire after all, a county that typically has around 115 rainy days per year, and it’s flat as you like so in the open fields we couldn’t be more exposed to the wrath of the elements. Upon sighting of a thick dark swathe of rainy anger racing towards us we hightailed it to the safety and sanctity of our car abandoned on the edge of the field with the aim of waiting out the worst of the downpour.
After half an hour of absolutely torrential rain, much more sensible and less stubborn detectorists would have probably gone home by now. But not us. Upon it easing minutely we decide, what the hell, let’s get back out there. We are here now just how bad can it be?
Well an hour into what is turning into quite a sodden and muddy dig we have been rewarded with nothing but trashy signals. The highlight of which was a piece of bent tractor coupling that almost tricked us into thinking we had found a silver spoon. At least there’s one upside to our perseverance as the washing of the topsoil has revealed the familiar grey glint of Roman Greyware that we often find lurking in the depths of the plough here. Greyware was typically used throughout the Roman Empire and is the most common type of Roman pottery that occurs in the fields. It makes up 80% of Roman Pottery found here in Britain and would have been used by all domestic roman societies from the poorest to the richest. It’s essentially the Victorian Blue and White ware for the Romans, and just happens to be one of our favourite items to fill our finds bags with in between signals.
Just as the rain is starting to seep into Ellie’s socks, at last a signal gives us something else to fill our finds bags. A small musket ball appears through the ever increasing muddy slurry that the surface of the field is quickly becoming. We always love finding a musket ball as they often bear many stories hidden within their form, weight and even findspot. The majority of all lead shot that is found in the fields is left over from the English Civil War which saw one of the largest uses of lead shot on English soil and afterwards most military action was carried out overseas. So apart from the odd gentry hunt you can assume a Civil War date. The tiny size of this particular one means it can only have been used as a pistol shot and fired with quite some force from the barrel of a flintlock pistol causing a hefty impact which has left a heavy indentation on one side.
It does seem that the rain has washed away all the Romans, but next we do find a rarity for this field. A halfpenny minted under William III coming from the 18th Century here in England. It is rare to discover such a ‘modern’ find here. We can just make out the shadow of his distinctive bust on this toasted disc and this humble halfpenny would have been quite the loss of wages back in the day.
During the 18th Century life and wages were naturally very different to what we know today. Like now, they had their own cost of living problems but their clothes and rent represented a much higher proportion of spending even than they do at the minute. Wages could be as low as just £2 or £3 a year! At least those domestic servants on this wage were receiving basic food, lodging and clothing alongside, but any of those going it alone would need to earn at least £20 a year. An entire third of which would be spent just to buy a single mans suit for the grand cost of £8. So a halfpenny which could get you half a loaf of bread was actually quite a considerable sum to lose!
Rather bedraggled and with the rain starting to seep through our coats…
Rather bedraggled and with the rain starting to seep through our coats, which have helpfully decided that they will no longer remain waterproof, we are rewarded with lead. At least it’s a find thats got the research gears going. It’s a semicircular, domed, partially pierced lead object that weighs 23g. A curious discovery that clearly has a purpose but just what for? Artefacts like these often get squirelled away as weights, gaming pieces, counters, tokens or simply just named as all of the above. We can’t come to a solid conclusion on this item but we have come up with a few options that it could be based upon it’s form and weight so what do you think?
The first option is a flattened musket ball dating from a similar period to the William III Halfpenny that we have just found as 23g just so happens to be the standard weight of a carbine shot of this time. But that circular pierced depression just seems a bit odd for a musket ball. So the next option would be a Medieval Trade Weight, but the standard weight of 1oz at this period is 31g so it would be very underweight! However it is common for trade weights to be partially pierced to provide a hanging point. Which brings us to the last and most exciting option after a little dig deeper into some lead trade weight history. It’s not the correct weight for an English ounce but it does happen to be the correct weight for a Viking ounce or 1 ora as they called it. We found a piece of Viking Hack Silver on our last visit and have we just found part of the weight system that was used to govern that transaction on this occasion? But most importantly of all do you think it was worth staying out in the rain for. It’s a very good thing that Ellie’s car has seat covers on thats for certain as we start to make the squelchy trek back!