Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/361

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ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK WJ>%'^A*i ^«Ji. Fig. 22. Sandhill containing Urns, Felmingham. Other, resting on two tiles (fig. 21). The lower urn which was 8 inches high, of a bowl or pot shape and adorned with ring-handles (No. 19), contained a curious collection of about twenty little objects, all with one or two exceptions of bronze. I may mention a small bust of Helioserapis (the Sun and Serapis amal- gamated, No. 1 1), a hel- meted head — perhaps of Minerva (No. 5), a statu- ette 3 inches high of a Lar with his drinking-horn and cup (a common and conventional type, No. 7), a bearded head which I cannot identify (No. 10), some fibula, two bases or stands for statuettes (Nos. 15, 16), and the like. A silver coin of Valerianus Cassar, that is, Saloninus the son of Gallienus, minted a.d. 253-259, gives some clue to the date of the whole hoard. A coin of Vespasian was found near the hoard but apparently had no connection with it. A year or two later another discovery was made in the same spot — seventeen urns, all rude and mostly of ordinary dark clay, and a rude earthenware ' candlestick ' of a common type, all lying together inside a sand heap, in total disorder but for the most part un- broken ; a bronze coin, probably of Septimius Severus, was in one urn, pieces of iron in another, but no bones or ashes or other objects (figs. 22, 23). Those who described the finds when they were made attributed them to the sepulchre of a priest or flamen,but they are nei- ther sepulchral nor have they anything to do with a flamen. The bronze ob- jects are a few household treasures, hidden either by the owner or by some one who had robbed him ; the urns found subsequently seem rather to be a rubbish-heap, and suggest that some sort of habitation may have stood near.^

  • For the bronze hoard %te Archaological Journal, i. 381, 385 ; Richard Hart, The Antiquities ofNor-

folk (Norwich, 1844) pp. iii.-viii., with two plates and fanciful explanations. The head of Helioserapis (wrongly described by Hart as Fortuna Barbata) is figured by Dawson Turner, MS. 23,029, p. 193, and in the Norwich vol. of the Institute, p. jtxvii. The coin is Cohen No. 26. For the later find of urns see Archteohgical Journal, iii. 246, and drawings in Dawson Turner's MS. 23,029, pp. 190 foil. 309 Fig. 23. Pottery from the Sandhill.