Written by Victoria Szafara, Finds Liaison Officer (maternity cover) for Leicestershire & Rutland
For most of us, when we think of ‘notable’ archaeological finds, the exceptional, extraordinary or maybe even Treasure finds are the items which most readily spring to mind – Iron Age gold torcs, Roman cavalry helmets, medieval coin hoards and other display-case-worthy items. And whilst these types of artefacts are certainly exciting (and, likewise, certainly things to share with your local finds liaison officer should you find them!) sometimes it’s less easy to see the vital importance of the more ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ discoveries made by members of the public each year in England and Wales: for example, the imperfect copper alloy coin, plain or incomplete bow brooches, or undecorated lead weights. Despite their designation as common finds, these more familiar artefacts are still notable – worthy of notice and recording, as these can still offer valuable archaeological information and unique, vital insights into social history.
In the more than 20 years of recording public finds, the Portable Antiquities Scheme has built up a whopping database of more than 1,600,000 artefacts, the vast majority of these being the discoveries of metal-detectorists. Although the artefacts on the PAS database have been most often found in ploughed land and so typically lack precise stratigraphic contexts, the recording of their modern find spots (grid references) allows us to place individual finds in their landscape contexts, as well as trace the artefacts’ depositional (spatial) patterns on various local, regional and national scales. It is upon establishing such trends – including continuity and variation in where items were uncovered – that we can then begin to unpick the factors which may have led to these particular patterns, and, ultimately, we may be able to revise our understanding of the past societies who used these artefacts. With such knowledge at stake, recording as many artefacts as possible is pivotal.
In this post, we can take for just one example, the potential for the Portable Antiquities Scheme data to revise our understanding of Roman Rural settlement patterns.
It is generally thought that likely 80-90% of the Romano-British population lived in the countryside. If this population estimation is even near to correct, then assessing trends in artefact deposition for these areas and site types would be vitally important for unlocking a democratic view of social practice for the province. Despite this, in British archaeology, there’s traditionally been a bias towards excavation/archaeological study into urban or military site types for the Roman period. Developer-funded archaeology since c. the 1970s has been helpful in redressing the balance, when commercial development happened to take place in these ‘rural Roman’ areas, and the Rural Settlement of Roman Britain project has compiled a great body of data from such excavations and a few earlier ones; however, the PAS is increasingly useful in its own right for providing insight into Roman rural settlement patterns, since finds reported to the PAS often originate in rural locations, as well as smaller towns and forts.
Within the PAS database finds dated to the Roman period, brooches are among the most commonly recorded (second only to coins, in terms of number of records). The type known as a ‘trumpet’ brooch is dated roughly to the late 1st-2nd centuries CE, and both enamelled and non-enamelled versions show broad associations with urban and military sites according to published sources from legacy excavations in England and Wales. However, the body of trumpet brooches now recorded with the PAS has challenged this traditional picture, as trumpet brooches show not only wide distribution but also relatively high numbers throughout England and Wales which indicates that these would have also been familiar to members of the rural population in the Roman period.
Certainly, there are various interconnecting factors which may account for these particular distribution patterns. Although there is not space to discuss in this brief post, it is clear that a more nuanced, complex picture of rural life in Roman Britain is possible when the PAS data are taken into account.
As this brief example demonstrates, considering broad spatial patterns in common PAS finds can provide unique insight into national and regional histories. As more and more finds are recorded with the database, this understanding can be constantly enhanced and revised. This is one of the reasons it’s so important that finds, no matter how ‘common’, made by members of the public continue to be recorded, and we’re immensely grateful to all who voluntarily share their non-Treasure discoveries to this end!
