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The Significance of Snake Jewellery Hoards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

H.E.M. Cool
H.E.M. Cool
Affiliation:
Nottingham
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Extract

In the past decade there has been a growing acceptance that aspects of Romano-British religious or ritual life can often be detected in unusual deposits that have no overtly religious content. This has led to a debate about the nature of precious metal hoards. Should they be seen as one aspect of this ‘ritual’ behaviour, or did the motives often come from the need for safe keeping with a variety of patterns being observable? Though those favouring a more ritual interpretation of the hoards have stressed the need to view them alongside other special deposits of non-precious material, there has been little attempt to set individual hoards within the context of the more general material culture in use at the time of their deposition. It will always be difficult to set spectacular finds such as the Hoxne treasure against the background of what is common as a site find, but it is possible to do this for the more modest hoards. This paper is an exploration of one such class of hoard, those with snake jewellery. At one level these can be interpreted as simply safe-keeping hoards of various types. If the jewellery is placed within the wider context of contemporary patterns of personal ornament, however, anomalies are revealed that make such straightforward interpretations difficult to sustain.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 31 , November 2000 , pp. 29 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © H.E.M. Cool 2000. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

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