The Jewellery Trail

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Copper alloy bracelet

A wide variety of bracelets and armlets were worn during the Roman period in Britain. Roman style bracelets are known to have existed in Roman Britain from the 1st century AD and they became very popular in the 4th century AD.

They were part of a feminine costume during the Roman period. They had no practical use and were worn for pure decoration.

Most Romano-British bracelets were made from copper alloy, but some rarer examples were made from jet, shale, glass, silver and gold.

This bracelet is made out of copper alloy. Many different types of copper alloy bracelet were made and worn in the Roman period. Cable bracelets were a very popular bracelet type throughout the Roman Empire. Cable jewellery is made from strands of wire twisted together.

There are 2 sources of information for the way in which bracelets like this example were worn in the Roman period. Evidence comes from representations of people wearing dress accessories in Roman art, such as the Regina tombstone, and the position of bracelets in excavated graves. Both sources suggest that bracelets were worn in pairs, with 1 bracelet on each wrist. Sometimes as many as 7 were worn at the same time.

Fragment of a Roman finger ring and intaglio

The use of engraved gems in items of jewellery was an ancient tradition in the Classical world but was new to Roman Britain. The widespread use of gems and glass set in metal ornaments such as rings marks the classicization of jewellery in Roman Britain.

An engraved gem is also known as an ‘intaglio’. This means that an image was sunken or incised into the stone. If the stone was to be used as a seal (a device impressed on a piece of wax to seal a document) then the impression would display the tiny image in relief.

An intaglio was usually made from a semi-precious stone such as carnelian, jasper and chalcedony.

Sometimes, cheap imitations of these stones were made from glass, like this example. This does not mean that they were of a lower quality than semi-precious examples. Some glass intaglios from the Classical world are of a very high quality. They would have been engraved using wheels and drills. However, in Roman Britain, many glass intaglios were made by the simpler process of moulding and then set in simple bronze rings.

Heart-shaped jet pendant

Pendants from the Roman period were made in a variety of materials and shapes. Some pendants even had amuletic (protective) functions in additional to having a decorative use.

This heart-shaped pendant is made out of jet. Jet is a relatively rare and unusual material. It is a hard black variety of lignite (a sedimentary rock) that takes a brilliant polish. This is why it is used to make jewellery.

Jet is rare because it can only be found in certain areas of Britain and Germany. One of these areas is Whitby in Yorkshire. Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields is unusual in having lots of jet items, when places closer to Whitby do not. In addition, Segedunum Roman Fort, only a few miles away from Arbeia hardly has any jet items at all. It is not entirely known why this is. Arbeia also has some lumps of un-worked jet, and some finger-rings of an unusual design not found elsewhere, demonstrating that jet items were made there. It is possible that a jet-worker set up in business at Arbeia and had the raw jet sent up from Whitby.

This pendant has a small pierced circular hole at the top. Jet pendants and others made of glass and bone would have been worn on soft leather thongs, lengths of textile thread, wire or ribbon.

Plate brooch in the shape of an eagle

Brooches were worn by the native British people before the Roman invasion. This means that brooches of the Roman period in Britain show a mixture of both British and Classical styles.

Brooches were not just for decoration. They also had a practical use of securing clothing, in particular cloaks and tunics, and worked in a similar way to modern day safety pins. This meant that brooches were worn by both male and female as both sexes would have needed to secure their clothes.

This example is a plate brooch. Plate brooches were made from a flat piece of metal and were usually made from bronze and decorated with enamel. The technique of making enamelled bronze brooches was a highly specialised skill.

Plate brooches are found in a variety of shapes but many were made in animal shapes. Popular animal shapes included birds, hares, hounds, horses and fish. Many of these animals are thought to have had symbolic importance during the Roman period. This Roman plate brooch is the shape of an eagle. The eagle was associated with the Roman god Jupiter. Jupiter was the god of the sky and head of all the Roman gods.

Fragment of a shale armlet

This fragment of an Iron Age bracelet is made from shale. Shale bangles and armlets made from shale were an established type of jewellery in Britain before the Roman invasion.

Shale bracelets were made on a lathe by cutting away the middle section of a flat disc and then finished by hand. Shale bracelets tended not to be decorated other than with simple engraved linear lines. The colour and polished finish of the shale made them look very attractive.

Bracelets like this example probably came from southern England. Shale can be found in various areas including the Kimmeridge region of Dorset on the South Coast. They would have been traded as unfinished objects. Shale is a dark dine-grained sedimentary rock formed by the compression of successive layers of clay. However, like jet, it can be polished up to look black and shiny.

Jet finger ring

Finger rings were worn by both men and women during the Roman period. However, they were a new type of jewellery in Roman Britain.

There were many different types of finger ring including; simple rings, ring keys, wire rings, marriage rings, seal rings and enamelled rings.

Rings could be made from a wide variety of materials including bronze, jet, silver, iron, gold, amber and glass.

This Roman finger ring is made out of jet. Jet is a relatively rare and unusual material. It is a hard black variety of lignite (a sedimentary rock) that takes a brilliant polish. This is why it is used to make jewellery.

Jet is rare because it can only be found in certain areas of Britain and Germany. One of these areas is Whitby in Yorkshire. This is why a large number of jet items have been found here in the North East at the Roman fort of Arbeia.

Jet can be intricately carved. However, rings made from jet tended to be inspired by metal rings and were decorated with simple carvings. This example is carved with very simple circular designs.