The Snettisham Roman jeweller's hoard - Catherine Johns

The Roman treasure found in 1985 at Snettisham, Norfolk, consists of a collection of silver jewellery, coins, engraved gemstones and scrap silver carefully packed into a small pottery jar and hidden for safe-keeping in the middle of the second century AD. It was evidently part of the stock of a local jeweller's workshop, and as such is so far unique in the Roman world. This catalogue, illustrated throughout, brings together a team of expert contributors from the British Museum and elsewhere to produce an authoritative account of the treasure. The hoard as a whole has proved exceptionally informative, demonstrating the close association between silver- and gold-smiths and gem-engravers and confirming that silver coins were hoarded and used to make jewellery. Although of a modest quality when compared with the many gold ornaments which survive from the period, the range of types found within a single workshop at one point in time provides a new and sounder basis for the close dating of other finds of provincial Roman jewellery.;The circumstances and context of the discovery are recounted and the combination of archaeological, art-historical and scientific approaches casts new light on many aspects of Roman jewellery manufacture.