Massive Bronze Age torc stolen from Ely Museum

Ancient, Looting, Museums

One of the largest gold torcs ever discovered was stolen from the Ely Museum Tuesday. Thieves broke into the closed building in the wee hours on the morning of May 7th and stole the Bronze Age gold torc and a heavy gold bracelet from the same period. Only the two gold objects were taken.

Both of the stolen artifacts were found by metal detectorists in East Cambridgeshire. The solid gold bracelet was discovered in 2011. The torc was discovered in a recently ploughed field in September 2015. The four-flange spiral twisted bar torc is more than 4’10” long from trumpet terminal to trumpet terminal and weighs 732 grams (1.6 pounds). It dates to around 1300-1100 B.C. Not only is it exceptional for its size and weight, but also for its purity. Analysis found it is composed of 86-87% gold and 12-13% silver, which makes it 20-21 carat gold by today’s standards.

Dr Wilkin, who is responsible for the British Museum’s British and European Bronze Age Collection, described it as “one of the most important Bronze Age finds that’s ever been made in England”.

He said the torc is the “largest of its type in the whole of Europe” and its diameter is “larger than any adult male trousers that you can buy in a shop today”.

He speculated the torc could have been worn over bulky clothing or by a sacrificial animal but its use “remains a guessing game”.

At this time in the Bronze Age, people were no longer being buried with important objects – instead they deposited them at “important places in the landscape”.

Dr Wilkin said: “We don’t necessarily know why, but we think it was a gift to the gods, designed to secure good harvests or a healthy family. I’ve calculated you could probably make 10 smaller objects out of this one, so it’s a really big sacrifice of wealth and status.”

The Ely Museum acquired the torc in September 2017. After it was determined to be treasure at a coroner’s inquest, the British Museum’s valuation committee assessed its fair market value at £220,000 ($275,000). Local museums are given first crack at raising the sum, and the Ely Museum secured grants, including a large one of £138,600 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and donations from the public to reach the goal. A month later, the torc was on display at the Ely Museum, the pride and joy of its permanent collection.

Elie Hughes, curator at Ely Museum, said: “We are devastated by the loss to the museum and to the local heritage of the region. It is a huge blow after the incredible support from the community in acquiring the torc in 2017. As a culturally significant object, it cannot be replaced. Our priority now is working with the police to locate the stolen objects.”

The museum is housed in Ely’s Old Gaol building since 1997.  The 700-year-old building was extensively redeveloped to improve access, display space and security in 2021, so it’s not like its systems are old junk. The break-in was just swift and targeted. The worst part of this is that the torc is obviously completely unsalable. It is far too famous and unique to be passed off on the sly, and the odds of this being a commissioned theft for an unscrupulous private collector are miniscule. The real danger is that the priceless archaeological artifacts will be melted down for their mere gold value.

The Cambridgeshire Constabulary are investigating the crime. They are currently looking for two people who seen on e-scooters in the vicinity of the museum between midnight and 2:00 AM Tuesday. Anybody with information can contact the police by dialing 101 in the UK or through its online chat service.

Pre-Roman Iron Age necropolis unearthed near Naples

Ancient

An Iron Age necropolis that predates the rise of Rome has been discovered in the town of Amorosi, 30 miles northeast of Naples. A preventative archaeology excavation before construction of a power plant at a site near the Volturno river unearthed a large funerary area in use between the third quarter of the 8th century B.C. and the late 7th century B.C. Archaeologists excavated a total of 88 tombs, both cinerary and inhumation burials, replete with grave goods identifying them as belonging to the Culture of the Pit Tombs, a pre-Samnite people that inhabited the interior of the region that is today known as Campania.

The grave goods evince distinct gender differences. Males were buried with weapons, while women’s graves contained jewelry and ornaments made of bronze, amber and worked bone. Both men and women were buried with pottery of various shapes and sizes, usually placed at the feet of the deceased. Some burials were notable for the exceptional objects, for example a large, richly decorated bronze belt found in one grave. In addition to the pit tombs, two stand-out graves in the literal sense were large mound burials 50 feet in diameter that must have belonged to the highest ranking elites of the community at that time.

The archaeological team recovered several parts of the graves in soil blocks. The local Superintendency of Archaeology of Caserta has enlisted experts to carry out micro-excavations of the soil blocks in a warehouse laboratory specially set up for this task. The materials they recover will be analyzed, as will the bone remains and the soil itself.

The municipality of Amorosi has begun to plan a museum to exhibit the archaeological treasures found in the excavation (and future ones) in the hope of attracting cultural heritage tourism. Next year is a Jubilee year, and millions of visitors are expected to descend on Italy. The town is moving quickly to get a museum up and running to take advantage of the influx of Jubilee crowds.

Largest collection of 16th-17th c. fabrics in Europe found in Poland

Modern(ish)

Archaeologists have uncovered the largest collection of 16th-17th century fabrics and footwear in Europe at a construction site in Toruń, Poland. The collection includes entire shoes in both eastern and western styles, fragments of pleated dresses, neckline trim, woolen stockings, very expensive gold cloth and silk.

Toruń was one of the most important cities in the Hanseatic League. It was the fulcrum of a vast trade network throughout Europe and the Near East. With access to the best raw materials, Toruń developed a highly-skilled and varied community of cratsmen to create the best quality products made of horn, metal, ceramics, fabric and leather for sale to the wealthy and elites of Europe.

The site was being excavated in advance of construction of a new film studio when footwear was found in a trench. There were shoes that would have been worn by the working class and footwear that could only have been afforded by the wealthy. Spur mounts on high boots point to them having belonged to military officers. The fragments of silk and gold cloth were imported from Turkey or Persia, and were extremely costly. Previous to this find, silk had only been found in the crypts of churches, most of them small fragments. The pieces found in this dig are much larger. A lady’s woolen glove lined with silk is so fine it is comparable only to liturgical gloves found in the graves of bishops.

The workmanship and materials in some pieces from the collection are so fine that you’d expect to find them only in the city where wealthy townspeople could buy them, but when this collection was deposited, it was in a suburb of Toruń. Similar finds in the suburbs of Gdańsk, for example, are of much lower quality and cost.

The quantity of items is also remarkable. Woolen stockings, for example, when they survive at all are usually found individually. There were 11 wool stockings found in this group, and three quarters of them were in an excellent state of preservation. The shoes and textiles all show signs of wear, and the fact that scraps were being collected suggests they may have belonged to a shoemaker’s workshop and a clothes repair shop in the area.

Vindolanda volunteer finds disc brooch intact with pin

Ancient

A volunteer at this season’s excavation of the Roman auxiliary fort of Vindolanda just south of Hadrian’s Wall uncovered a brightly-colored disc brooch with catchplate, pin lugs and pin intact. The pin is still sharp and still fits neatly into its clasp. It dates to the late 3rd, early 4th century.

The brooch is round with a low wall outlining a round central setting and a ridge around the outer edge. It is made of brass and would originally have been gilded. The molded glass inset mounted into the central setting is of the donut-shaped type: a flattened hemisphere with a dimple in the center topped by a small plug of glass that forms a nipple. It is multi-colored, with red, blue and yellow stripes swirling out from a yellow nipple.

Round brooches like this one have been found before, often with the glass inset missing. (The mounts on the round design appear to have been prone to loss; more insets have survived in the oval form.) They were of British manufacture and have been found almost entirely in Britain at varied sites (military, urban, religious, rural, etc.). Only about a dozen of the donut-shaped disc brooches are known in Britain, and of more than 600 oval and round brooches found, only 26 of them were discovered in archaeologically excavated and stratigraphically dated contexts.

The object is so beautiful and in such excellent condition, that even when it was freshly excavated it was clear that it was the stand-out find of the season. After it is cleaned and conserved, it will go on display at the Vindolanda museum.

See Marta Alberti-Dunn, Deputy Director of excavations, discuss the brooch with the volunteer who found it in this video:

Unique Tyrian purple found at Carlisle Roman bathhouse

Ancient

An incredibly rare chunk of Tyrian purple dye, the first one of its kind ever discovered in northern Europe and maybe the whole Roman Empire, has been unearthed in the remains of the Roman bathhouse at the Carlisle Cricket Club. The soft purple lump about the size of a squashed golf ball was found in the drains of the 3rd century bathhouse last October. The unknown substance was tested by experts from Newcastle University who determined that it was an organic material containing Bromine and beeswax, indicating that it is vanishingly rare and prohibitively expensive pigment strongly associated with Rome’s imperial court.

Tyrian purple was derived from the mucus of the hypobranchial glands of the two species of Murex sea snails. Enormous quantities of snails were required to make the dye. About 12,000 of them needed to be collected and processed to produce less than two grams of pigment. The production was so time, labor and cost-intensive that the pigment was worth more than gold; as much as three times more, according to some ancient sources. Garments dyed with Tyrian purple were so expensive that they were the exclusive province of the wealthiest elites. In Rome, even going back to the days of the Republic sumptuary laws controlled who was allowed to wear purple clothes, and by the 4th century A.D., only the emperor was allowed to wear garments dyed with the precious pigment.

Solid samples of Tyrian purple have been found only in small bits in frescoes at Pompeii and some Egyptian sarcophagi, but these were just accidental areas of concentrated paint particles, not an unused chunk of the raw pigment. The Carlisle Tyrian purple lump may very well be unique, the only archaeological example found anywhere in the former Roman Empire.

Previous finds from the Carlisle Cricket Club excavations — an inscription dedicated to Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus and mother of Caracalla, tiles stamped with the IMP mark, giant statue heads, the sheer size of the bathhouse which is the largest building on Hadrian’s Wall– strongly suggest an imperial presence at the Roman cavalry fort of Uxelodunum. The discovery of the Tyrian purple, which was literally a metaphor for royalty (as in, “ascending to the purple” meaning taking the throne), is even stronger evidence.

Frank Giecco, Technical Director at [contract archaeology company] Wardell Armstrong, said:

“For millennia, Tyrian Purple was the world’s most expensive and sought after colour. It’s presence in Carlisle combined with other evidence from the excavation all strengthens the hypothesis that the building was in some way associated with the Imperial Court of the Emperor Septimius Severus which was located in York and possibly relates to a Imperial visit to Carlisle.

“Other evidence being an inscription stone to the Empress Julia Domna, the date of the monumental building – among the largest on Hadrian’s Wall – coinciding with Emperor Septimius Severus campaigns in Scotland, and an ancient source stating Septimius Severus was in Carlisle, and the high quality of the objects discovered at the bathhouse, granting of civic status to the local Celtic tribal capital at Carlisle; which in effect is the beginning of the city of Carlisle.