Roman Bronze Vessels

This paper reviews, in the light of recent archaeological discoveries made since the early 2000s, the notion of Gallic symposion and the nature of commensal practices in communities from the Late Iron Age. It leads to a halftone statement, indicating different relations of certain social categories with regard to imported wine and it reveals the complexity of a process of acculturation too often reduced to economic or colonial patterns. The detailed analysis of this process within a precise site, the oppidum of Corent, underlines the usefulness of planned archaeological excavations as an experimental field.

Cet article réexamine, à la lumière des découvertes archéologiques récentes réalisées depuis le début des années 2000, la notion de symposion gaulois et la nature des pratiques de commensalité en vigueur dans les sociétés de la fin de l’âge du Fer. Il débouche sur un constat en demi-teintes qui témoigne d’un rapport différencié de certaines catégories sociales à l’égard du vin importé et révèle la complexité d’un processus d’acculturation trop souvent réduit à des schémas économistes ou colonialistes. L’analyse fine de ce processus à l’échelle d’un site, l’oppidum de Corent, souligne toute l’utilité des fouilles archéologiques programmées en tant que terrain expérimental.

In the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia there were found six intact or fragmented 1st century AD bronze pateras of types Eggers 154–155, one separate handle, one separate foot, as well as one patera medallion in secondary use. They are are discussed in detail in this article with the involvement of also rare finds of Roman bronze pateras from the Dnieper region, South-Western Crimea, the territory of the Bosporan kingdom and the Kuban /Transkuban areas. Noteworthy are the rare examples of the transitional type from Eggers 154 (Hagenow) to Eggers 155 (Millingen). Many pateras have lost their handles or part of their feet. The patches fixed with rivets have been preserved on the pateras from the Lower Don and South Urals.
If bronze amphorae, basins, ladles, casserolles and hammered jugs in the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia were found more or less frequently in the same burials, then bronze pateras fall out of the typical raster of mutual occurrence. The small number of finds does not provide grounds for their correlation with male or female burials – they are known in both. In Sarmatia there is no connection between the finds of pateras and oinochoai, which not only in the Roman Empire and the European barbaricum, but also in the necropoleis of the South-Western Crimea and the Bosporan Kingdom were found in the same complexes as part of one set.
In general, it is obvious that pateras belong to a relatively rare category of imported Roman bronze vessels in Asian Sarmatia (comparable in number to amphorae) and began to to be distributed here already in the first half of the 1st century AD. These vessels were valued, among other things, because in a number of cases they are represented by luxurious specimens inlaid with silver and decorated with figural medallions. They were repaired, and the medallions of such pateras were reused. If the finds of the earlier pateras of the Eggers 154 type are concentrated in the Lower Don region, then the later pateras of the Eggers 155 type were spread in the Lower Volga region and even in South Urals. At the same time, there are no reliable finds that could be unequivocally attributed to the Eggers 154 pateras in the cities of the North Pontic area – on the contrary, Eggers 155 pateras became widespread here.

Die Dichte großflächiger Ausgrabungen im Rheinischen Braunkohlenrevier kennt bzgl. der ländlichen römischen Besiedlung kaum Parallelen innerhalb der antiken Welt. Kartierungen geben einen aktuellen Überblick über diese Ausgrabungen. Ein Alleinstellungsmerkmal sind die zahlreichen Brunnen, die bis zur Sohle ausgegraben wurden und zur Entdeckung bedeutender organischer Funde führten. Die jüngst weitgehend ausgegrabene Villa rustica HA 156 von Kerpen-Manheim wird erstmals ausführlicher mit den wichtigsten Funden vorgestellt. Die archäologischen Belege für die Erhitzung, Lagerung und Weiterverarbeitung von Dinkel geben ein – sonst selten an einer Fundstelle so geschlossenes – Bild für die landwirtschaftlichen Produktions- und Verarbeitungsprozesse im antiken Rheinland. Ein Skelett und eine Bronzekanne in der Brunnenverfüllung des 3. Jahrhunderts dieser Villa weisen auf eine empfindliche Störung dieser Prozesse während der Krise des Römischen Reiches. Diese Krise betraf offenbar mehrere Villen im Arbeitsgebiet, wie eine Revision bekannter Skelettfunde in römischen Brunnen aus dem Rheinischen Braunkohlenrevier belegt: Das Ende der Landwirtschaft führte damit letztlich zum Wachstum des Hambacher Forstes vor etwas über 1750 Jahren.

During excavations in the cemetery of the town of
Noviomagus in Nijmegen-west archaeologists of
the Radboud University of Nijmegen discovered the
remains of a series of monumental burial complexes
comprising walled enclosures and funerary monuments,
and associated rich burials dating from the
end of the 1st century AD.
The aim of this publication is to establish whether
these burials show influences from the Roman world
and have cultural and religious connections with the
Mediterranean, or whether they reflect indigenous
traditions. Closely linked to this are questions concerning
the status and ethnic background of the buried
persons, for which the burial ritual, funerary customs
and grave goods may provide clues.
The high economic and social status of this group and
its cultural and political alliance with Rome and the
imperial family are evident from the monumental
burial complexes and certain grave goods. Many of the
grave goods are quite extraordinary, such as glass urns,
sets of dining and drinking ware, glass vessels, toilet
implements, writing utensils, lamps, a folding chair,
jewellery, amulets of amber and rock crystal, weapons
and pieces of textile adorned with gold thread. Such
grave goods were totally or almost totally absent in the
rest of the cemetery.
Some of the burial traditions practised here tell us that
the people who were buried in these graves were not
Roman by birth. They were most probably Batavians,
and members of the local aristocracy or the municipal
elite of Noviomagus. Some of the men seem to have had
a military background.

The paper discusses Roman bronze strainers of the Eggers 160 type from the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia of the first centuries AD, the peculiarities of their distribution in the territory of the Roman Empire, in the European Barbaricum and in Sarmatia, where such strainers, unlike the main regions of their distribution, did not form sets with dippers of similar shape. 12 or 13 strainers have been recorded in Sarmatia, most of which originating from the territory of Asian Sarmatia. Such a strainer (together with a deeper) was found in Tanais, in a room perished in the mid-3rd century AD. This is the only example of a “dipper-strainer” set found Eastern Europe. With the exception of this find, strainers of the type under consideration were not found either in the Bosporus, or in Olbia and Chersonesos, or in the burial-grounds of the South-Western Crimea. An analysis of the design of the holes on the walls and bottoms of the strainers suggests that the strainers from the burials of the 3rd century AD in the burial mound in the Vyatskaya street in Rostov-on-Don and in the Lebedevka kurgan necropolis in the South Urals, in which the holes are evenly spaced on the bottom and walls of the strainers, probably should be considered as Bosporan imitations of the imported Roman artifacts. The finds of the Eggers 160 type strainers originate from both female and male burials, especially often they were found together with bronze jugs, mainly Blechkanne, Eggers 99-106 basins, as well as casseroles of Eggers 140, 144 and imitations of the Eggers 140 types. It is assumed that the Romans used such strainers to filter the resinous undiluted wines, or they could serve both for the preparation of wine and food. It is not clear how the nomads used the strainers, but the fact that they have never been found in the sets with dippers of Eggers 160 type testify perhaps, a different use of them. In this regard, we should note that the strainers found in Lebedevka, contained "dried grass stalks".

The article dwells on the find of the bronze basin in the burial no. 5 of the kurgan no. 1 of the group "Bogomol'nye peski I" near the village of Nikolskoye, Enotaevsky District, Astrakhan Region. A belt-set of gold with turquoise inlays found in the region of the pelvic bones of a 40-45-year-old warrior, an iron dagger in a wooden scabbard with round-shaped iron overlays covered with gold foil and with turquoise inlays, and other finds allowed the author of the excavations to attribute the burial to the 1 st-2 nd centuries AD. It is obvious that the buried warrior belonged to the nomadic elite. A bronze basin, standing almost vertically, was leaning against the northern side of the grave-pit at its bottom. The analysis has shown that the basin belongs to a rare variant, till now unknown in Sarmatia. The closest parallel of its edge with a rim bent outwards and decorated with a band of Ionian kymation is a basin from the prince's burial in Hoby on the island of Lolland in Denmark, usually dated in the first half of the 1 st century AD. The peculiarities of the rosette design at the bottom of the basin associate it with a Tassinari S2300 type basin from Pompeii and some bronze paterae of the Eggers 154 / Nuber D type (Hagenow), which also indicates a probable dating no later than the first half or the middle of the 1 st century AD. The basin demonstrates clear signs of deliberate damage. Not only the foot-ring and handles were lost, but the body itself was punched in several places in the form of wedge-shaped holes from the blows of a knife or dagger (?), which are very close in shape to the holes on the silver phalerae and the bowl of the Parthian circle of the second half of the 2nd - first half of the 1 st century BC from the Trans-Volga region.

The book examines the fourth- to eighth-century copper alloy wares in the Benaki Museum, using them as the basis on which a wider debate about the production, circulation and use of copper vessels in Late Antiquity can be built. It is an attempt at a holistic approach to this rich but as yet little studied material. Apart from the necessary typology and dating, the study also includes systematic discussion of questions regarding the alloys used in the manufacture of the copperwares and the techniques employed in their production and decoration. The study of primary sources provided evidence about the late Roman and Medieval Greek terminology associated with each group of objects, as well as interesting information about the distribution of various types of vessels, the context in which they were used and the value their owners placed on them, while also containing useful references to the coppersmiths themselves.

Most of the Benaki copperwares were acquired on the Egyptian market and can be connected with the rich local production in the Late Roman and Early Islamic period. Yet the study of these artefacts showed that they have striking similarities with a wide range of archaeological material discovered over an extremely large geographical area, from the Eastern Mediterranean to Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK. The geographical spread of copper alloy wares that follow a parallel development in different parts of the empire and also appear almost contemporaneously in Western European burials reignites the debate on the production centres and subsequent modes of distribution of these artefacts. In turn these issues touch on the long-standing debate on the so-called ‘Coptic bronzes’ and the actual role of Egypt in the overall production of and trade in these articles in Late Antiquity.

This study focuses on the analysis of the bronze vessels discovered in Libisosa (Lezuza, Albacete), belonging to the late Republican period. The artefacts date back to the final Iberian phase of the oppidum; crucial from a strategic point of view and destroyed during the first third of the 1st century BC and where a Roman colony would be founded at the beginning of the following century. The collection of bronzes, generally associated with the passage of the Roman Army, is remarkable in their number and variety. This is explained by the excellent level of conservation of Oretanian settlement due to its sudden devastation and the military presence of the Res Publica even before the confrontation took place there in the context of the Sertorian War.

The cremation grave from Vlkov nad Lesy, which was discovered by J. Celler, a pupil of a local municipal school, at the location of Vyšehrad in around 1910, represents an important complex dating from the second half of the 2nd to the early 3rd century AD. Its importance lies in the fact that the cremation was placed in a bronze, Westland-type cauldron. Along with the mentioned urn, the grave also contained two iron stuhlsporn-type spurs, a deformed sword and other small objects. The grave and its nature build on the traditions of burials in bronze vessels of the early Roman period. This phenomenon can be considered as a typical sign of rank of the barbarian elite.