Posted on 09/04/2014 1:43:26 PM PDT by Red Badger
A hoard of Roman treasure believed to have been hidden from Boudicca in the first century has been discovered by archaeologists in Colchester.
The collection, including fine gold and silver jewellery, had been buried for safekeeping during the early stages of Boudicca's Revolt, Colchester Archaeological Trust said.
It represents the first hoard of precious metals ever found in Colchester town centre and is thought to have belonged to a wealthy Roman woman, who stashed the treasure under her house when she heard the vengeful queen's armies were approaching.
The archaeologists said the hoard was found under the floor of a house that was later burned to the ground. Burnt food was scattered around and human bones were found lying near the treasure in the debris. Two of the bones showed injuries, suggesting a fight or violent death took place.
In the collection, excavators found three gold armlets, a sliver chain necklace, two silver bracelets, a silver armlet a bag of coins and a jewellery box with two sets of gold earrings and four gold rings.
The team said they expect to uncover even more objects as they continue to dig.
Boudicca was queen of a British Celtic tribe. After her husband's death, instead of her taking over rule of the land, the Roman emperor took over, flogging Boudicca and raping her daughters.
She then launched a revolt against the Romans, destroying Roman towns as they went, killing thousands along the way until she was eventually defeated, with Boudicca either killing herself or dying.
Colchester Archaeological Trust said: "The find is a particularly poignant one because of its historical context. It seems likely that the owner or perhaps one of her slaves buried the jewellery inside her house for safe-keeping during the early stages of the Boudican Revolt, when prospects looked bleak.
"The writings of the ancient historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius record the main course of the revolt. Here we learn that Boudicca and her army destroyed three towns by fire and that the inhabitants of Colchester were not evacuated but suffered a two-day siege before defeat."
The trust said people living in Colchester knew an army was coming and that they were defenceless. The team believes the woman to whom the jewellery belonged may have been brutally killed by the army: "The noblest of the women were taken to sacred groves, mainly of their Goddess of Victory (called Andrate/Andate), where they were killed in a horrific way.
"The quality of the jewellery found at Williams & Griffin suggests that the owner would have been in this category, although there is no direct evidence to indicate that she ended up in a sacred grove."
The lesson of history is that trained heavy infantry, especially those fighting for hearth and home and country, will beat an untrained barbarian rabble almost every time.
Coming in late here, but that’s right...there is actually no source for that quote. I imagine some woman thought it sounded Helen Reddyish and it just took off from there.
I give the woman credit, though...and I love British history. This find is intriguing to me.
You have legit sources for that?
Old King Cole is derived from Coel
As in coil....not coal as in dark or swarthy or black
Every historical reference I’ve seen to the origin of Old King Cole...a rhyme from 1700s
Is a Briton or Welsh king who rebelled against the Romans or latter overlord
Its like when I’ve seen folks claim black Irish really means Negroes
Not swarthy or maybe at most Galician celto-dna
I just file such nonsense in my files along with race is a social construct or Cleopatra was black etc
Could ancient Romans masters have brought north African slaves or soldiers to Britain
Yes it seems reasonable?
Were they negroid raced...no.
In fact north Africa at this time was less Arab than now and more simply Med basin Caucasians....some even....God forbid blonde and fair
Its so silly the lengths and lies we go to in order to make legacies for non whites that they can be proud of or even better....feel superiority over whites
And if that doesn’t work...the white man robbed it.
I love how so many movies and TV series today put Negroes and Orientals in historical context where they factually don’t belong
Its as bad as shield maidens as something more than Valkyrie mythology
“Fast forward two centuries or so and the King of the Colchester area was Old King Cole of nursery rhyme fame. Supposedly, he got his name from the city and his skin color, so was most likely a North African Berber by ancestry.”
If he was a Berber his skin wouldn’t have been black. Berber nomads are a mixed ethnicity but the mix is of peoples you find along the Mediterranean. Olive skinned Caucasians. The Sahara walls off the Maghreb from black Africa.
The pirates of the Mediterranean who enslaved Europeans during their salad days of the 16th and 17th centuries were referred to as "Turks" even though they were most likely from what is now the Maghreb.
Yeah, the PC crowd, particularly in Hollywood, gets ahold of these factoids and portrays these rather despicable figures as heroic figures, enhanced by much darker skin as you would find in central Africa which, by the way, is NOT where Hannibal got his elephants. The Sahara was less expansive then than now, but still presented a formidable barrier.
I agree with that. Britons would have regarded Berbers as swarthy and dark. But wardaddy is also correct when he says that Old King Cole’s name is derived from the Celtic word meaning ‘coil’ and has no relation to ‘coal’. He was more likely a native Briton than a Berber brought along by the Roman legions. Britons were a clannish people. Their descendants in America still are. It’s a stretch to think that an outsider would lead them.
Wikipedia notes that King Cole was possibly a Briton who had been a leader in the Roman military, who had turned his command into a kingdom when Rome left.
This same scenario is suggested for King Arthur- a Romanized Briton, a cavalry officer who attempted to maintain Roman civilization after the legions pulled out.
This is even more true in Old King Cole's case since he predates the legendary King Arthur by a couple of centuries.
The native Brits certainly had no love for the Romans up to and including Boudicca's time and for several years beyond.
By the time Arthur's legend rolled around, they had grown so fond of things Roman that the Roman founded city of London became their capital.
Even as late as the Elizabethan age, portions of the original Roman wall were still intact within London and the English had come to see themselves as the key preservers of civilization exemplified by Roman culture, even though Elizabeth's father had made every attempt to stamp out the Roman Catholic church, arguably history's greatest repository of the same.
The point, I suppose, is that a lot changes in a relatively short time and legends change and metamorphisize to fit the needs of the purveyors of those same legends.
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