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Trajan Places: Establishing Identity and Context for the Bosham and Hawkshaw Heads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2015

Miles Russell  and
Harry Manley
Miles Russell
Affiliation:
Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth Universitymrussell@bournemouth.ac.ukhmanley@bournemouth.ac.uk
Harry Manley
Affiliation:
Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth Universitymrussell@bournemouth.ac.ukhmanley@bournemouth.ac.uk
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Abstract

Two damaged, weathered marble portraits, both discovered in the 1780s at opposite ends of Roman Britain, one at Bosham in West Sussex, the other at Hawkshaw in Peeblesshire, are here re-examined and identified as portraits of the emperor Trajan. The Bosham head is interpreted as a post-mortem image of the deified Trajan set up at the margins of Chichester Harbour, probably during the visit to Britain by the emperor Hadrian in the early a.d. 120s. The Hawkshaw portrait of Trajan appears to have been refashioned from a likeness of Domitian and may originally have been part of a monument created to celebrate and commemorate the total conquest of Britain, in the early a.d. 80s, which was decapitated and buried during a period of unrest on the northern frontier.

Keywords

TrajanDomitianRoman sculptureimperial portraitureidentityBoshamHawkshaw
Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 46 , November 2015 , pp. 151 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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