Ii. Finds Reported Under the Portable Antiquities Scheme

Abstract

The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) was established 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 from 2004 onwards. This 17th annual report first briefly summarises the general character of Roman finds reported in 2019. From this year we no longer present artefact and record numbers in detail by county, since the regional differences in artefact frequencies documented by the PAS are well-established, with highly consistent patterns having been reported over the last 16 years. 2 Instead, the general totals are given followed by some examples to illustrate the regional variation in 2019. The majority of this report then comprises the publication of significant individual artefacts recorded by Finds Liaison Officers. OVERVIEW In total, 29,571 objects of Roman date were documented in 2019. As a single record may sometimes document more than one item, for example describing a coin hoard, assemblage of ceramics or building materials, the total number of Roman objects documented exceeds the number of records (18,088). The counties with the single largest numbers of records are found in eastern England and, to a lesser degree, central-southern England. 3 In Wales and northern and southwestern England, the number of artefacts documented is much smaller. 4 This regional variability in the distribution of PAS records for 2019 closely follows the pattern established over the previous 16 years. The key factors that determine this distribution include variable use and deposition of metal objects in antiquity, differences in historic and contemporary agricultural practice and the uneven intensity of metal-detector use. 5 Discoveries of coins and brooches again vastly outnumber those of all other artefacts. With the addition of the coins recorded in 2019 (21,487) more than 400,000 Roman coins have now been recorded by the PAS, as calculated from these annual totals, the fruit of continuing emphasis on recording large assemblages of Roman coins in toto. 6 After coins, brooches are the most frequently reported artefact type. A total of 32,492 examples have been documented by the Scheme since 2003 as established in these annual reports, including the 2,067 examples 1

From Roman Table to Anglo-Saxon Grave: An Archaeological Biography of the Scremby Cup

“…Exceptions in Britain include a flask dating to the first half of the second century AD from Corbridge, Northumberland (Casey & Hoffmann, 1995: 24), and pans from the sacred spring at Bath, Somerset (Henig et al, 1988: 9-21) and the cemetery at Brougham, Cumbria (Cool, 2004: 124-28). Despite their archaeological scarcity, new finds of enamelled vessels are still being made in Britain by hobby metal detectorists, most recently at St Lavan, Cornwall, in 2019 (Pearce & Worrell, 2020).…”