G. D. B. Jones: 'The Solway Frontier: Interim Report 1976-81', Britannia xiii (1982)

Abstract

The seahorse may particularly refer to travellers on the sea as the motif occurs on statuettes or reliefs of Neptune whilst the dolphin is more commonly used in the context of rivers and would appear to have a connection with well worship and in turn with the cult of the dead, cf. an altar to Coventina from Coventina's Well at Carrawburgh.10 The use of lead is unusual as the lead figurines and reliefs known from Roman Britain are few in number and poor in quality. Two lead openwork reliefs from Gorsium in Hungary have points of similarity with the Wallsend shrine in that they each depict a deity standing on a rock(?) in an archway, one representing Minerva and the other Venus(?), but these would appear to be mounts rather than free-standing shrines. Lead was more commonly used in the production of coffins, tanks and caskets, and the decoration on the doors of the Wallsend shrine is very.similar to the motifs used on lead coffins of the fourth century A.D.12 The only exact parallel so far known is a fragment of a door discovered in the 1976 vicus excavations at Vindolanda stratified in a floor-level of mid to late fourth-century date.13 The Wallsend shrine was found in association with the fourth-century 'chalets' which replaced the earlier barrack blocks so a fourth-century date would appear to be in order. The working hypothesis, therefore, is that the object is a portable shrine to Mercury dated to the fourth-century A.D. The shrine is being published ahead of the excavation report in the hope that other examples might be forthcoming to confirm or refute the conclusions reached so far.