{"id":105,"date":"2024-09-25T13:49:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T12:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/?p=105"},"modified":"2025-02-03T15:46:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T15:46:36","slug":"late-roman-hoard-from-dorchester-dorset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/2024\/09\/25\/late-roman-hoard-from-dorchester-dorset\/","title":{"rendered":"A Spoon Hoard from Dorchester"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dorchester III (Somerleigh Court Estate) hoard (photo taken by K. Clarke-Neish and reproduced with permission from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery <\/p>

Ellen and Kelly recently visited\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Dorset Museum and Art Gallery<\/a> to study the coins and objects from a late Roman hoard found in Dorchester (Dorset) in 1898. <\/span><\/span><\/span>53 silver coins (siliquae<\/em>) were found alongside two silver spoons and several fragments, though one of the coins has since been lost<\/span>. <\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0The hoard serves as an excellent example of the <\/span><\/span>type of hoards<\/span><\/span><\/a> we have chosen to look at during the project.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n

When we arrived at the museum’s study room, our eyes were immediately<\/span>\u00a0drawn to the<\/span> small cardboard\u00a0box that the coins are kept in…<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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Dorchester – Hoard I Somerleigh Court 1898 cardboard box (Photo: \u00a9 The Trustees of The British Museum. Reproduced with permission from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Aside from two short articles published in the early 1920s, information about the hoard is limited and its contents have not been studied in great detail.<\/span> Our key <\/span>objective<\/span> was to closely examine the wear of the objects and to take the<\/span> weight of each item to calculate the silver content of the hoard. <\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Re-examining the coins allowed <\/span>us<\/span> to substantially update the original <\/span>coin <\/span>catalogue published<\/span> more than<\/span> a century ago.\u00a0<\/span>The latest coins in the hoard were <\/span>minted in Milan and <\/span>issued <\/span>under the emperor Honorius <\/span>(<\/span>395-40<\/span>2<\/span>).<\/span>\u00a0In looking at the design and inscriptions on the coins, <\/span>Kelly was also able to <\/span>determine<\/span> several of the siliquae<\/em> were possibly <\/span>irregular and probably <\/span>co<\/span>ntemporary copies<\/span>. <\/span>These<\/span> coins enable us to <\/span>consider wider questions surrounding the production, <\/span>supply<\/span> and <\/span>demand for coinage <\/span>in the late Roman period<\/span>. <\/span>Most of the coins <\/span>were also lightly clipped around their edges \u2013 a <\/span>phenomenon that occurred in the later fourth and early-mid fifth centur<\/span>ies.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The spoons in the hoard displayed evidence of typical wear. We know that the owners of the spoons were right-handed based on the worn front-left edges of the spoon bowls.<\/span><\/span> What’s more interesting, though, is the possibility that the spoons were also carefully clipped in a similar way to the siliquae. Ellen and the team will be undertaking further research to determine whether this is the case. <\/span>The spoon fragments, meanwhile, probably represented a source of silver bullion at the time of their deposition.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

We left Dorchester with lots more questions than answers and look forward to comparing the contents of the hoard with the rest of our dataset.<\/p>\r\n

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Ellen examining one of the spoons (Photo: \u00a9 The Trustees of The British Museum.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n
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Kelly examining the wear on some of the coins (Photo: \u00a9 The Trustees of The British Museum.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dorchester III (Somerleigh Court Estate) hoard (photo taken by K. Clarke-Neish and reproduced with permission from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery Ellen and Kelly recently … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83068,"featured_media":125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[305568,304923],"tags":[304923,302710,306147],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}