Contextualising Romano-British Lead Tanks: A Study in Design, Destruction and Deposition

Crerar, Belinda

doi:10.1017/s0068113x12000232

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…71 Ten of the tanks are decorated with a Chi-Rho monogram; others have an iota-chi, an alpha-omega, orantes, or some combination. 72 For example, the East Stoke and Flawborough tank fragments portray orantes flanking an inscription with a Chi-Rho in a circle above. 73 See the East Stoke fragment in Figure 9.…”

Section: Women Baptizers Portrayed On the Walesby Tankmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holy Spirit Mother, the Baptismal Womb, and the Walesby Tank: Excavating Early Christian Women Baptizers

Kateusz¹

2022

Feminist Theology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Writers starting with Tertullian and the author behind the Didascalia Apostolorum attest to the presence of early Christian women baptizers, as do a variety of later writers. The early Christian tradition of Holy Spirit as female and mother, her womb the font of new birth (Jn 3.3-5), helps illuminate why women may have been seen as the midwives, or ministers, of this birthing ritual. Likewise, the identification of the font as a womb adds to Jocelyn Toynbee’s 1964 proposal that a scene on the Walesby Tank, a fourth-century Romano-British baptismal font, portrayed two clothed women assisting a nude female neophyte at her baptism.

show abstract

Section: Women Baptizers Portrayed On the Walesby Tankmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holy Spirit Mother, the Baptismal Womb, and the Walesby Tank: Excavating Early Christian Women Baptizers

Kateusz¹

2022

Feminist Theology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…91 The Preshute example lies on the southern margins of the distribution of the 31 lead tanks now documented from Britain, which are dated mainly to the fourth century A.D. and possibly later. 92 They are typically circular with two separate sheets for the sides welded onto a separate base. The dimensions in this case suggest that the Preshute tank was of a similar size to others, most being between 0.5 and 1 m in diameter and having sides of 0.2 to 0.6 m in height.…”

Section: Wiltshirementioning

confidence: 99%

II. Finds Reported under the Portable Antiquities Scheme

Pearce¹,

Worrell²

2018

Britannia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

2018 marks the twenty-first anniversary of the establishment of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in 1997 as an initiative to record archaeological objects found by members of the general public. Initially set up in pilot form, in 2003 it was extended to the whole of England and Wales. 1 Surveys of Roman period finds recorded by the PAS have been published in Britannia since 2004. This fifteenth annual report summarises the general character and distribution of Roman finds reported in 2017 and publishes significant individual artefacts recorded by Finds Liaison Officers. 2 J. Pearce and S. Worrell, 'Roman Britain in 2016 II. Finds reported under the Portable Antiquities Scheme', Britannia 48 (2017), 427. The quantities of individual finds can be calculated by manipulating the data available on the PAS website (www.finds.org.uk). 3 Hoards continue to be published in full through the Coin Hoards of Roman Britain series, as well as the individual coins being reported on the PAS database. PAS hoard data have been used for the now complete collaborative project on hoarding between the British Museum and the University of Leicester 'Crisis or Continuity. Hoarding in Iron Age and Roman Britain with special reference to the 3rd century AD'

show abstract

“…Within an architectural frame it shows three groups of figures; the central group consists of two clothed women flanking a naked woman, while the other two groups depict clothed males in cloaks and tunics. This has often been interpreted as the depiction of a baptism, with the naked catechumen being assisted to the font by two supporters (Thomas 1981: 221-225; though see now Crerar 2012). These are usually associated with baptism, despite the more widespread tradition of baptism by immersion, and seen either as fonts or vessels associated with other elements of the baptismal liturgy, such as ritual footwashing (pedilavium) (Watts 1991: 171-173).…”

Section: Baptismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Christianity in Roman Britain

Petts¹

2015

Oxford Handbooks Online

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract and KeywordsAlthough there is limited evidence for pre-Constantinian Christianity in Roman Britain, it is clear that in the fourth century ad the early church became increasingly widespread, partly owing to the influence of the Roman state. The archaeological evidence for this includes personal items bearing potential Christian imagery, possible liturgical fonts or basins, church structures and putative Christian burial traditions. The wider relationship between hristianity and contemporary pagan religious traditions are explored, and this chapter reviews this surviving material evidence and draws out evidence for regional variation in the adoption of Christianity. More generally, some of the wider practical and methodological issues involved in understanding the archaeology of Roman Christianity in Britain are examined, considering how easy it is to unproblematically identify evidence for Christian practice within late Roman Britain. Keywords: Roman Britain, Christianity, ritual, religion, belief, burial, churches IntroductionThe study of early Christianity has tended to assume a rather peripheral position with regard to the wider study of ritual, religion, and cult behaviour in Roman Britain. It is often dismissed as a relative latecomer to the religious landscape of the province, with its true importance developing only in the early Middle Ages. The wider debate about its importance is often couched in the terms of 'success' or 'failure', judgemental terms that are rarely used in discussion of other Roman religious traditions, such as mithraism. It also often implied that the spread of the church in Britain was far less extensive than in other part of the Empire, although often these comparisons are with very different parts of the Empire, and often with different periods (for example, comparing fourth-century Britain with fifth-or sixth-century southern Gaul). While a proper understanding of Roman Christianity certainly presents some specific interpretational challenges, the often over simplistic comparisons between Christianity and other religious traditions in Roman Britain often ignore some of the wider conceptual issues presented by the archaeological study of religious conversion. This chapter attempts to provide a brief overview of the extant evidence for the early church, but also hopes better to position Roman Christianity in its temporal and social landscape in fourth-and fifth-century Britain.

show abstract

Contextualising Romano-British Lead Tanks: A Study in Design, Destruction and Deposition

Cited by 6 publications

References 32 publications

Holy Spirit Mother, the Baptismal Womb, and the Walesby Tank: Excavating Early Christian Women Baptizers

Holy Spirit Mother, the Baptismal Womb, and the Walesby Tank: Excavating Early Christian Women Baptizers

II. Finds Reported under the Portable Antiquities Scheme

Christianity in Roman Britain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About