08-21-2008, 11:51 PM
Quote:Mike, am I correct in saying that enamelled plates are first seen in the second century? I'm thinking of the Caerleon and Vindolanda examples.
Enamelling is obviously around before the 2nd century AD but it only begins to make an appearance on military equipment in the first half of the 2nd century AD (although the dating evidence is thin on the ground, most of the pieces only being dated by association, rather than stratigraphically). The belt plate in the Corbridge Hoard ought to be Hadrianic and other dated pieces seem to be comparable. One thing Carlisle Millennium showed me was that a lot of stuff I had thought was Antonine was creeping in during the Hadrianic period (but I can't remember if any of the stratified finds from there included enamelled military equipment of the same date as, say, the armguards). Mike McCarthy showed me shedloads of stuff from those excavations and it was all a bit much to take in (and, having spotted the Newstead breastplate and clocked the significance of that, enamelled gubbins were pretty low down my list of priorities). This in turn reminded me of something that somebody had once said to me about a Hadrianic phase of destruction at Carnuntum (which of course made me think Waffenmagazin! - which I had always assumed to be Antonine).
Also intriguing are those enamelled buckle plates that closely resemble earlier niello-inlaid plates (but they are always buckle plates and only ever found in Britain, to the best of my knowledge). These too seem to belong in the first half of the 2nd century: one from Roman Gates at Caerleon (I dug on that whilst a student!) came from barrack block B phase III, dated to c.100 (Evans, D. R. and Metcalf, V.M. 1992: Roman Gates Caerleon, Oxbow Monograph 15, Oxford, 123 No.88).
Mike Bishop
