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 since 2004. This sixteenth annual report summarises the general character and distribution of Roman finds reported in 2018 and publishes significant individual artefacts recorded by Finds Liaison Officers. OVERVIEW As in previous reports the summary of Roman period finds reported to the PAS in 2018 begins with a discussion of their distribution. Table 1 documents the numbers of object types recorded on the online-accessible database by county, as before using older administrative boundaries from England and Wales for consistency with previous reports and grouping counties by PAS region. The first three categories comprise coins, brooches and other personal ornaments made of metal, these being the numerically most important categories of Roman period finds. The fourth column reports the number of records of Roman objects in all materials, including metallic and non-metallic objects (i.e. ceramic, glass and stone objects and building materials). This follows the same format used for presenting finds from 2016 onwards. 2 As a single record may sometimes document more than one item, for example describing an assemblage of building materials or ceramics or a coin hoard, the total number of Roman objects documented in the year exceeds the total number of records for the year. The number of Roman coins documented in 2018 is therefore considerably greater than the number of Roman period records. Nonetheless the distribution of records serves as a reliable proxy indicator for the distribution of findspots of objects reported to the PAS. 2018 saw many records made for Roman objects found in eastern England, especially in coastal counties from North Yorkshire to Suffolk, in some counties of the southeast Midlands and in central southern and southwestern England. In western England and Wales the number of records is much smaller. The documenting of a small number of large hoards partly explains the very many coins documented in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Lincolnshire during 2018. Significant examples include a Severan denarius hoard from Norton, Doncaster (SWYOR-4B2BFF), and large third-century hoards from Riby, Lincs. (LIN-E5A12D) and English Bicknell, Glos.