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13-613: The Shapwick Hoard is a hoard of 9,262 Roman coins found at Shapwick , Somerset , England in September 1998. The coins dated from as early as 31–30 BC up until 224 AD. The hoard also notably contained two rare coins which had not been discovered in Britain before, and the largest number of silver denarii ever found in Britain. The hoard was discovered by cousins Kevin and Martin Elliott, who were amateur metal detectorists , in

26-412: A field at Shapwick. Excavation of the site found that it had been "buried in the corner of a room of a previously unknown Roman building" and, after further excavation and geophysical surveying , "revealed the room to be part of a courtyard villa". Following a treasure inquest at Taunton , the hoard was declared treasure and valued at £265,000. Somerset County Museum Services acquired the hoard, with

39-445: A finished state. These were probably buried with the intention to be recovered at a later time. A merchant's hoard is a collection of various functional items which, it is conjectured, were buried by a traveling merchant for safety, with the intention of later retrieval. A personal hoard is a collection of personal objects buried for safety in times of unrest. A hoard of loot is a buried collection of spoils from raiding and

52-399: A useful method of providing dates for artifacts through association as they can usually be assumed to be contemporary (or at least assembled during a decade or two), and therefore used in creating chronologies. Hoards can also be considered an indicator of the relative degree of unrest in ancient societies. Thus conditions in 5th and 6th century Britain spurred the burial of hoards, of which

65-500: Is more in keeping with the popular idea of " buried treasure ". Votive hoards are different from the above in that they are often taken to represent permanent abandonment, in the form of purposeful deposition of items, either all at once or over time for ritual purposes, without intent to recover them . Furthermore, votive hoards need not be "manufactured" goods, but can include organic amulets and animal remains. Votive hoards are often distinguished from more functional deposits by

78-422: Is sometimes also known as a cache . This would usually be with the intention of later recovery by the hoarder; hoarders sometimes died or were unable to return for other reasons (forgetfulness or physical displacement from its location) before retrieving the hoard, and these surviving hoards might then be uncovered much later by metal detector hobbyists, members of the public, and archaeologists . Hoards provide

91-622: The aid of Somerset County Council , the National Heritage Memorial Fund , and other organisations, and it is now displayed at the Museum of Somerset in the grounds of Taunton Castle . An addendum to the discovery was filed in the Treasure Annual Report 2000 which added a further 23 coins, valued at £690, also found by Kevin and Martin Elliott. Notable inclusions in the hoard were 260 coins from

104-990: The most famous are the Hoxne Hoard , Suffolk; the Mildenhall Treasure , the Fishpool Hoard , Nottinghamshire, the Water Newton hoard, Cambridgeshire, and the Cuerdale Hoard , Lancashire, all preserved in the British Museum . Prudence Harper of the Metropolitan Museum of Art voiced some practical reservations about hoards at the time of the Soviet exhibition of Scythian gold in New York City in 1975. Writing of

117-422: The nature of the goods themselves (from animal bones to diminutive artifacts), the places buried (being often associated with watery places, burial mounds and boundaries), and the treatment of the deposit (careful or haphazard placement and whether ritually destroyed/broken). Valuables dedicated to the use of a deity (and thus classifiable as "votive") were not always permanently abandoned. Valuable objects given to

130-523: The original group. Such "dealer's hoards" can be highly misleading, but better understanding of archaeology amongst collectors, museums and the general public is gradually making them less common and more easily identified. Hoards may be of precious metals , coinage , tools or less commonly, pottery or glass vessels. There are various classifications depending on the nature of the hoard: A founder's hoard contains broken or unfit metal objects, ingots , casting waste, and often complete objects, in

143-502: The reign of Mark Antony from 31–30 BC, with over half the coins being struck in the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211). There were also two rare coins not discovered in Britain before depicting Manlia Scantilla , the wife of Didius Julianus , an emperor who was murdered four weeks after the coins were struck. Non-Roman coins included were three Lycian drachmae and one drachma of Caesarea in Cappadocia . The latest coin struck

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156-637: The so-called "Maikop treasure" (acquired from three separate sources by three museums early in the twentieth century, the Berliner Museen , the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology , and the Metropolitan Museum, New York), Harper warned: By the time "hoards" or "treasures" reach museums from the antiquities market, it often happens that miscellaneous objects varying in date and style have become attached to

169-422: Was in 224 AD, and it is estimated that the hoard as a whole represented ten years' pay for a Roman legionary . Shapwick has been the site of various hoard discoveries over the years, although the 1998 find was by far the largest. Hoard A hoard or "wealth deposit" is an archaeological term for a collection of valuable objects or artifacts , sometimes purposely buried in the ground, in which case it

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