Hoxne Hoard
The Hoxne Hoard is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes using a metal detector in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England, in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million.
The hoard was buried in an oak box or small chest filled with items in precious metal, sorted mostly by type, with some in smaller wooden boxes and others in bags or wrapped in fabric. Remnants of the chest and fittings, such as hinges and locks, were recovered in the excavation. The coins of the hoard date it after AD 407, which coincides with the end of Britain as a Roman province. The owners and reasons for burial of the hoard are unknown, but it was carefully packed and the contents appear consistent with what a single very wealthy family might have owned. It is likely that the hoard represents only a part of the wealth of its owner, given the lack of large silver serving vessels and some of the most common types of jewellery.
The Hoxne Hoard contains several rare and important objects, such as a gold body-chain and silver-gilt pepper-pots, including the Empress pepper pot. The hoard is also of particular archaeological significance because it was excavated by professional archaeologists with the items largely undisturbed and intact. The find helped to improve the relationship between metal detectorists and archaeologists, and influenced a change in English law regarding finds of treasure.
Archaeological history
Discovery and initial excavation
The hoard was discovered in a farm field southwest of the village of Hoxne in Suffolk on 1992. Tenant farmer Peter Whatling had lost a hammer and asked his friend Eric Lawes, a retired gardener and amateur metal detectorist, to help look for it. While searching the field with his metal detector, Lawes discovered silver spoons, gold jewelry, and numerous gold and silver coins. After retrieving a few items, he and Whatling notified the landowners and the police without attempting to dig out any more objects.The following day, a team of archaeologists from the Suffolk Archaeological Unit carried out an emergency excavation of the site. The entire hoard was excavated in a single day, with the removal of several large blocks of unbroken material for laboratory excavation. The area was searched with metal detectors within a radius of from the find spot. Peter Whatling's missing hammer was also recovered and donated to the British Museum.
The hoard was concentrated in a single location, within the completely decayed remains of a wooden chest. The objects had been grouped within the chest; for example, pieces such as ladles and bowls were stacked inside one another, and other items were grouped in a way consistent with being held within an inner box. Some items had been disturbed by burrowing animals and ploughing, but the overall amount of disturbance was low. It was possible to determine the original layout of the artefacts within the container, and the existence of the container itself, due to Lawes' prompt notification of the find, which allowed it to be excavated in situ by professional archaeologists.
The excavated hoard was taken to the British Museum. The discovery was leaked to the press, and the Sun newspaper ran a front-page story on 19 November, alongside a picture of Lawes with his metal detector. The full contents of the hoard and its value were still unknown, yet the newspaper article claimed that it was worth £10 million. In response to the unexpected publicity, the British Museum held a press conference at the museum on 20 November to announce the discovery. Newspapers lost interest in the hoard quickly, allowing British Museum curators to sort, clean, and stabilise it without further disruption from the press. The initial cleaning and basic conservation was completed within a month of its discovery.
Inquest and valuation
A coroner's inquest was held at Lowestoft on 3 September 1993, and the hoard was declared a treasure trove, meaning that it was deemed to have been hidden with the intention of being recovered at a later date. Under English common law, anything declared as such belongs to the Crown if no one claims title to it. The customary practice at the time was to reward anyone who found and promptly reported a treasure trove with money equivalent to its market value, the money being provided by the national institution that wished to acquire the treasure. In November 1993, the Treasure Trove Reviewing Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million, which was paid to Lawes as finder of the treasure, and he shared it with farmer Peter Whatling. The Treasure Act 1996 was later enacted, allowing the finder, tenant, and landowner to share in any reward.Subsequent archaeological investigations
The Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service surveyed the field in September 1993, after it was ploughed, finding four gold coins and 81 silver coins, all considered part of the same hoard. Both earlier Iron Age and later mediaeval materials were also discovered, but there was no evidence of a Roman settlement in the vicinity.A follow-up excavation of the field was carried out by the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service in 1994, in response to illegal metal detecting near the hoard find. The hoard burial hole was re-excavated, and a single post hole was identified at the southwest corner; this may have been the location of a marker post to enable the depositors of the cache to locate and recover it in the future. Soil was removed in spits for analysis in the area around the find spot, and metal detectors were used to locate metal artefacts. This excavation recovered 335 items dating to the Roman period, mostly coins but also some box fittings. A series of late Bronze Age or early Iron Age post holes were found which may have formed a structure. However, no structural features of the Roman period were detected.
The coins discovered during the 1994 investigation were spread out in an ellipse centred on the hoard find spot, running east–west up to a distance of on either side. This distribution can be explained by the fact that the farmer carried out deep ploughing in 1990 in an east–west direction on the part of the field where the hoard was found. The farmer had ploughed in a north–south direction since 1967 or 1968, when the land was cleared for agricultural use, but the absence of coins north and south of the find spot suggests that the ploughing before 1990 had not disturbed the hoard.
Items discovered
The hoard is mainly made up of gold and silver coins and jewellery, amounting to a total of of gold and of silver. It had been placed in a wooden chest, made mostly or entirely of oak, that measured approximately 60×45×30 cm. Within the chest, some objects had evidently been placed in smaller boxes made of yew and cherry wood, while others had been packed in with woollen cloth or hay. The chest and the inner boxes had decayed almost completely since the time of burial, but fragments of the chest and its fittings were recovered during the excavation. The main objects found are:- 569 gold coins
- 14,272 silver coins, comprising 60 miliarenses and 14,212 siliquae
- 24 bronze coins
- 29 items of jewellery in gold
- 98 silver spoons and ladles
- A silver tigress, made as a handle for a vessel
- 4 silver bowls and a small dish
- 1 silver beaker
- 1 silver vase or juglet
- 4 pepper pots, including the "Empress" pepper pot
- Toiletry items such as toothpicks
- 2 silver locks from the decayed remains of wooden or leather caskets
- Traces of various organic materials, including a small ivory pyxis
Coins
The gold solidi are all close to their theoretical weight of 4.48 g. The fineness of a solidus in this period was 99% gold. The total weight of the solidi in the hoard is almost exactly 8 Roman pounds, suggesting that the coins had been measured out by weight rather than number. Analysis of the siliquae suggests a range of fineness of between 95% and 99% silver, with the highest percentage of silver found just after a reform of the coinage in 368. Of the siliquae, 428 are locally produced imitations, generally of high quality and with as much silver as the official siliquae of the period. However, a handful are cliché forgeries where a core of base metal has been wrapped in silver foil.