A Jeweller's Die from Alchester; Oxfordshire

Abstract

A small lump of copper alloy, roughly ovoid in shape and measuring 45mm in length, 28mm in breadth and 10mm thick (fig I a), was excavated at Alchester in 1927 beneath the courtyard of a building just inside the east gateway, apparently associated with mid second-century pottery. In his report, published in our Journal, J H Iliffe calls it merely an ‘irregular lump of bronze, flat on the back’. It was presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford together with other finds by the Alchester Excavation Committee and the Accession register carries a somewhat fuller description: ‘Bronze object of uncertain use. Oval; flat on one side, convex on the other. On the flat side four hollows with undecipherable decoration within them – a weight? A bronze ingot?’ Over twenty years ago our Fellow, Mr P D C Brown, then Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, took an impression of this face (fig I b). The hollows were clearly identifiable as two confronted pairs of serpent heads, and the object was thus a die for manufacturing the terminals of serpent bracelets and rings. Presumably it was used by taking a strip of gold or silver, bending it into a hoop and hammering the ends into the impressions. One pair is larger, with a width of 10mm, and was certainly employed for bracelets; the other is slighter at 7mm and the heads are closer together and they could well have been employed for rings.