Archaeological Discoveries in Gloucester
In celebration of the release of The Dig film on Netflix today, which charts the amazing discovery of Sutton Ship burial, we asked our City Archaeologist about his favourite archaeological discoveries in Gloucester.
In 1914 an exceptionally beautiful mosaic pavement was found beneath what is now Debenhams and presented to Gloucester Museum. It still survives today, having been set into the floor of the museum. This is the only surviving complete (or very nearly complete) mosaic in the city. It gives a hint of how impressive and colourful some of the city’s Roman buildings must have been. Today it can be seen (partly covered by carpet) in the Museum.
During a 1983 excavation next to Commercial Road in Gloucester (on the site of the old Norman Castle) archaeologists found the remains of a tabula board and counters. The set had apparently been dumped in a rubbish pit within the castle, probably after it had been broken. The board originally had a single-piece wooden base made of Ash. The upper sides and panels of the board were entirely covered with bone panels fixed in place by small iron pins, some of which survived. The general layout of the panels follows that of a present-day backgammon board. The 30 counters or Tablesmen are made of Red Deer skull or Red Deer antler (15 of each). All the counters are decorated with carved pictures in relief, each picture is unique with a wide variety of themes including astrological signs and biblical events. The counters are carved in a Norman style, whilst the board reflects an Anglo-Saxon artistic tradition. This is the only complete set ever found, and it is of international importance. The gaming set can be viewed in the museum of Gloucester.
Gloucester is located within an area which, in the late Iron Age, was within the territory of a nation referred to in historic sources as the Dobunni. Coinage was adopted late in the Iron Age in Britain – in the decades leading up to the Roman invasion. The Dodunni themselves are one of the last to adopt coinage in Britain, generally nations nearest to France adopt coinage first and many further north and in the west never produce their own coinage. The Dobunnic coinage appears to have been a copy of (or certainly inspired by) a type of coinage found in Gaul. The Dobunnic coins are characterized by a stylized horse with a tail of three strands ( a motif commonly used by earlier gallic coins and by some other British coins). Of all the southern British nations who adopt coinage – only the Dobunni keep the triple tailed horse design in their later coinage. This is an example of a gold Dobunnic coin (archaeologists refer to these as ‘staters’) you can hopefully see the horse and the three tails. The coins are generally found along the Severn Valley as far south as Camerton in North Somerset extending north into Worcestershire. Extending east to west from the Oxfordshire Cotswolds to the far side of the Forest of Dean – this is thought to represent the general extent of Dobunnic territory.
Found in an excavation off Parliament Street in 2001 – this fascinating object, a Roman glass flask, is in fact incomplete. It would originally have formed a miniature inside a much larger glass vessel. It appears that this larger, outer vessel, has broken at some point and the base of the smaller vessel has been carefully trimmed around the base – to allow the smaller flask to essentially be recycled. This type of coloured flask (known as a ‘snake thread’ flask) are believed to have been made in the Rhineland area of what is now Germany. The flask was found placed within a grave in part of a Roman cemetery which extends along the Southgate area of Gloucester.
