BEHIND THE DIG : ROMANS AMONGST THE RAPESEED STUBBLE
Violence, Cooking and a Rather Unhealthy Obsession with Lead
Arriving late morning to our permission we knew that the predicted weather forecast wasn’t the greatest that it could have ever been and there was a pretty high chance of getting caught in one of the four downpours scheduled for the day. But we weren’t quite expecting the rain to have a head start on us, making it very necessary to shelter in the car for half an hour until some truly biblical rain showers passed overhead.
But even torrential rain couldn’t dampen our excitement as we had just had the first heads up from the farmer, harvest had begun. Not only can we finally get back onto the plough fields we have been craving from the pasture slopes, but one particular field that we have been patiently waiting for over a year is freshly harvested and ready for digging.
Picking our moment in between the showers we make the trek deep down the overgrown public footpaths of our permission to the furthest field on the map. The harvest is fresh, as in it all got harvested this week fresh, so we brace ourselves, and our knees, for what we know is going to be a difficult day in the stubble. But it’s not just any old stubble we are facing, no this early harvest only contains the worst stubble of all. Rapeseed.
Once harvested, rapeseed tends to leave behind it thick tree like stalks that are the metal detectorists nemesis, restricting the sweep of the coil and generally just making it an all round pain to weave in between its tightly packed stump forests. If the rain hadn't already done its best to disrupt the dig, upon arrival to the field the coil itself threw a tantrum making it impossible to swap onto our nifty 7” small coil due to some seized fastenings around the coil lugs. So stuck with our normal coil lets try and find just what drew us to this field in the first place. Roman.
But it’s not just any old stubble we are facing, no this early harvest only contains the worst stubble of all. Rapeseed.
Some deep land and historical record research has revealed a wealth of Roman activity across this particular field and based upon that and our own in the field research of surrounding fields we are pretty excited to get a proper go in here. And the very first signal in the stubble certainly didn’t disappoint our enthusiasm. A strong 15/16 on the Equinox VDI screamed out between the stalks revealing a beautiful Roman, a Fel Temp Reparatio type struck under Constantius II between 348 - 361 AD. Now that’s what we came here for.
The Fel Temp Reparatio type is one of the more iconic varieties of late third century roman coinage and was a particular favourite struck under Constantius II. On its reverse a Roman soldier is depicted spearing a fallen barbarian horseman. Some quite violent iconography. There are lots of different varieties of this pose but in every single one of them the barbarian is dying, it's quite an unusual design for a Roman coin as it actually shows us a moment of death. It's certainly a contender for the most violent and gruesome coin made by the Romans but the message in contrast is quite the opposite of such a violent act. Fel Temp Reparatio translates as ‘Restoration of Happy Times’. A rather violent restoration of happy times it seems.
You only have to look into the troubled and turbulent life of Constantius II to understand why he favoured such violent iconography upon his coinage. Declared Caesar at just 7 years of age, much of his early life was surrounded by violence and warfare, as he was first sent off into battle at only nineteen, tasked with pushing back the invading Persians in the Western part of the Empire. The death of his father Constantine the Great in 337 created yet another violent environment as Constantius II long with his two brothers Constantine II and Constans ascended to the throne as three Emperors, but they were expected to share the Empire with their cousins and had their reign threatened by other heirs with a claim to the throne. So a familial purge ensued and all threats to the three brothers' reign were mysteriously killed under obscure circumstances, almost an entire male line apart from the infants were wiped out almost overnight. There are lots of different claims as to who orchestrated these violent acts but several historians believe it to be the work of Constantius II.
It's certainly a contender for the most violent and gruesome coin made by the Romans but the message in contrast is quite the opposite of such a violent act.
The reign of Constantius II only continued to be violent and bloody as over a decade was spent dealing once again with the troublesome Persians led by their King Shapur II. Usurpers continued to threaten the rule and stability of the three brothers with the barbarian officer Magnentius succeeding in executing Constans and seizing power throughout most of Europe. With violence and war seeded into the route of almost every act of Constantius’s life and reign you can see why to him violence was the only answer to creating peace and tranquillity, and why a strong Roman soldier triumphant in battle would be a reassuring message to the people of the Roman Empire.
But the messages woven into the fabric of the iconography upon Roman coins aren’t always that of violence and warfare as our next Roman coin find revealing the silhouette of a god or goddess standing proudly in the centre of the reverse bears much more of a religious and cultural background. Roman gods and goddesses have been used on Roman coins since the earliest use of coinage in the Empire and the particular god or goddess chosen often reflected the propaganda tactics of the Emperor in power at the time.
It has been estimated that only 20 - 30 percent of men and 10 percent of women were literate within the Empire so the iconography on coins was an incredibly important vessel for communicating messages across all reaches of the Empire, potentially even further as the opportunities are limited only to how far the coins would travel. Using images of Roman gods and goddesses helped to consolidate the power and reign of the Emperor at the time as the Roman gods were regarded as much higher beings to the Roman people, a being only translatable to the Emperor themselves.
Roman gods and goddesses have been used on Roman coins since the earliest use of coinage in the Empire and the particular god or goddess chosen often reflected the propaganda tactics of the Emperor in power at the time.
Back on the plough fields it’s important to keep your eye on more than just the VDI screen as archaeologically there are a hell of a lot more artefacts out there than just the metal ones that help build the picture of exactly what you are standing on top of. So even with stubble debris covering the surface of the soil we kept an eye out for pottery in particular. Pottery is a huge treasure trove of information and can provide insight into a large part of ancient life. Research into the particular sherd that is uncovered can help with the dating of a site, reveal what people were eating through the food residue left upon the sherd and highlight trade routes creating a better understanding of the economy at that time.
So our second Roman find of the day turned out to not be a metal artefact but a rather large rim sherd of Roman Greyware. Greyware is a great tool to be looking out for to help identify Roman sites as it makes up 80% of all Roman pottery found in Britain. It was basically the staple of Roman pottery and they used it for essentially everything, from vessels for food preparation, cooking, storage and of course utensils like cups and plates. It’s generally quite a coarse ware and its fabric varies across the country as it was often produced locally to the site it was found in. This does mean that it comes found in almost every grey possible.
So even with stubble debris covering the surface of the soil we kept an eye out for pottery in particular.
Now where there’s pots there’s often plenty of associated metal artefacts that come with them and our next find reveals a bit more of the history behind ancient pottery. Lead pot mends were created when a vessel developed a hole, molten lead was poured into the hole forming a plug and keeping that pot alive for continued use. This practice of mending pottery was common from Roman times right up until the Post Medieval period and would have been used on a vast variety of pot types. A lot of the more complex types of Roman Pottery that can be found, like samian ware, nene valley ware and mortaria required the work of specialist potters to create them. These potters were often brought in from the continent or the pots imported into Britain and their produce was a highly valued item that was taken care of and often mended when broken.
Naturally when hearing of the use of lead as a glue for your broken pottery that you were eating out of, or preparing food in, it does create a small cause for concern when it comes to lead poisoning. But this was simply just not a thing for the Romans as they absolutely loved their lead. Roman winemakers insisted on using lead pots of lead lined kettles and lead was even suggested as an additive to one fifth of the 450 recipes written down into the Roman Apician Cookbook. Lead was simply thought to add complementary flavours and even after some Romans began to suspect the addition of some complementary illnesses to the mix as well, culture simply didn’t change and many historians believe that members of the Roman Aristocracy suffered from lead poisoning as a result of this.
One of these vessels that the Romans would have been preparing their lead riddled recipes with would be a Roman Mortaria, a bowl shaped vessel that was used for grinding herbs and spices in the preparation of recipes. Mortaria’s were only used in Roman times and more examples have been found here in Britain than in the rest of the Empire. So Lucie only has to go and find a beautiful rim sherd of this industrious Roman vessel.
Mortaria’s would have only been produced by specialist potters and had a coarse grit or iron slag embedded into their internal surface to aid in the grinding as well as thick, heavy rims to create easy gripping and lifting. A lot of Mortaria were produced for use within the Roman Military and there would have been trade routes of these vessels across the country, trade routes that can be easily traced through the identifying potters stamps stamped into their rims.
Naturally when hearing of the use of lead as a glue for your broken pottery that you were eating out of, or preparing food in, it does create a small cause for concern when it comes to lead poisoning.
The downpour that has been threatening us all day, glaring down on us from the horizon, has finally broken now with raindrops hammering down between the stubble. Far too far from the car to make a break for cover we push on and manage to eek out one last Roman amongst the shower. So far we’ve found a Roman coin that reveals the violence behind the reign of Constantius II and uncovered an unhealthy obsession with lead leading to some instability within the aristocracy. But this final Roman coin find reveals a problem within the Roman economy itself.
During the third century inflation was wreaking havoc with the Roman monetary system creating a bit of a coinage crisis that lead to one thing spiking across the empire. Contemporary forgeries, or barbarous radiates as they are better known. These coins copied common types of official roman coinage and were used in place of the change that the Romans simply couldn’t get their hands on at the time. But their execution varied greatly and as shown by our example some can measure just a few millimetres in diameter.
With coinage shrinking Roman rule is starting to come to an end in Britain and these miniscule coins will be the last money that the Brits will see for a while as after the Romans left the Romans left Britain, the monetary system dissolved away with it and a barter system returned to the island. It would not be until the 6th century that currency began to circulate again in Britain. An entire story of the culture and troubles of the late Roman Empire in Britain has been woven out of the context of our finds recovered from the tricky depths of this harsh stubble field. Certainly a field worth waiting for and one begging for a return after we’ve wrestled those troublesome fastenings off our stubborn coil.
