One of the hoards in our project is very easy for Ellen to study – it’s only a stone’s throw from the University of Kent, in the Canterbury Roman Museum. Do check out the hoard if you’re in the area – it’s on display and is one of the highlights of the collection. It was found near the London Gate of the Roman city wall, on the Canterbury ring road near St Peter’s Place.
The hoard contains mostly silver spoons, together with some other objects such as ingots, and gold jewellery. Some of the spoons are shown below, together with a strange object from the hoard that is much-debated by archaeologists. We know of several other examples, from hoards in Britain and beyond, but it’s a mystery what this type of object was for. Suggestions have ranged from uses in personal care and hygiene (for example, a nail cleaner), to a piece of dining equipment, or even an object used in Christian ritual practice. This last suggestion is based on the decoration of some examples, including the Canterbury one. They feature a motif, the Chi-Rho, that was a Christian symbol in the late Roman period.
The inscription on the spoon at the front should probably be read ‘I belong to a good man’, as Mark Hassall has suggested, and shows this item was an individual possession. We know something else about the ‘good man’ too – that he was right-handed. If you look carefully at the photo, you can see the front left edge of the spoon is very worn, a pattern that would be produced by a right-handed user. It is impossible to tell whether he was the same person as the one who buried the hoard.
