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Written by Susan Pearson
Introduction.
Roman jewellery was made throughout the empire from 27BC, when Roman styles absorbed Greek culture, until the founding of Constantinople in AD330, when Byzantine styles gradually took over. Many towns throughout the empire have produced evidence for metal-working in the forms of hearths, slag and scraps of metal or crucibles. With brooches an essential item of dress, and tombstones showing evidence of a lively jewellery market in general, the aurifex or goldsmith would have been an honoured craftsman. In actual fact, in early Rome the wearing of finger rings and other items of gold, as well as the burial of gold articles, was legally restricted, but during the period of the empire customs relaxed and jewellery was lavishly worn. As the empire expanded (AD200-400) Roman techniques and styles developed.
Styles and Materials
Romano-British jewellery was made and used in Britain after the Roman conquest in AD43, using Roman or native styles or a combination of both.
Polychrome jewellery was made using a technique learnt from the Greeks. This was multicoloured by reason of being inlaid with gems and glass in rub-over settings (bringing a collar of gold up over the edges of the stone rather than using the modern clasp setting).
Opus interrasile is a style of open-work decoration of metal used by the Etruscans, the Romans from the third century onwards, and then the Byzantines. It was made by piercing metal to form a fine fretwork, often creating a filigree-type background with a solid image left in relief.
Dipped enamelling had been used in Greek jewellery since the third century BC, and was still practised in Roman times. This involved dipping a heated metal core into molten glass then shaping it, and was mostly used for pendant earrings. Enamelling in general was very popular in the western provinces.
Precious stones including sapphires, aquamarines, topaz, garnet, cornelian, occasional uncut diamonds, and pearls were used in bezel (rub-over) settings for rings, necklaces and bracelets. Emeralds from Egypt or the Red Sea were also known. Glass, bone and pottery beads were used, too.
Jet from Whitby was of such fine quality that it was shipped to Rome and to the Rhineland, where the absence of waste material makes it clear that the items were manufactured in Yorkshire and exported as finished products. Pendants, beads, pins, rings and armlets were all made.
British pearls were known to Tacitus (end of the first century) and were still being sold in the fourth century. Silver, from the Mendip hills, was mined as a by-product of the lead industry. However, the silver yield was very low in Britain compared to other lead-mining areas in Europe.
Jewellery
Anklets
These were worn, but there is little detail available.
Bracelets
Sometimes set with gemstones and coins. Glass bangles were made, either clear or variously coloured. A jewellery case found in a woman's grave at Lyons includes gold bracelets decorated with cameo medallions (one of which portrays Emperor Commodus, dating it to the end of the second century at least) and a pair of bracelets made from twisted strands of gold wire.
Brooches
Brooches for the fastening of garments, formed of the pin (acus), the bow and the catch plate, much like a modern safety pin. These were made in Britain throughout the Celtic Iron Age and the Roman period and seem to have been a fashion mainly of the western provinces, developed from the Celts. Enamelled decoration was popular, small fish, insects and animals being great favourites, as well as polychrome blobs and discs. The crossbow fibula has a higher arch and two arms but is a later design (second to third centuries AD). - near Trier on the Rhine-Danube frontier, an enamelling workshop has been identified in the village of Pachten, making use of local deposits of copper to produce brooches and to repair metal vessels (and incidentally to forge coins!)
Bullae
Small ornaments of gold, or leather, worn on a string around the neck, usually singly but sometimes in groups as a necklace or bracelet. A bulla was made of two concave plates fastened together to make a container. The lenticular (lens shaped) form was adopted from the Etruscans and worn by children as an amulet (gold for nobles, leather for freedmen). Other shapes - globes, hearts or vases - were worn by women as ornaments or possibly to contain a liquid scent.
Earrings
Ball - a ball earring was a hollow hemisphere of undecorated gold to which was attached an S-shaped wire hook for fastening in the ear lobe. This type was extant in the first and second centuries AD.Bar - bar earrings were popular from the second century AD to the Byzantine period. They were set with a gemstone, below which was attached a horizontal bar from which depended several small pendants or pearls. One such pair, found at Lyons, was made of a garnet with emerald and pearl pendants.
Chandelier - a large gemstone in a gold setting from which is suspended three other gemstones. The Romans seem to have popularised this setting.
Hoop - a curved wire or band formed to hang below the ear, and threaded with gemstones and glass beads.
Pendant - a simple hanging jewel, such as the second pair found at Lyons, which were an emerald, ruby and sapphire, one below the other on a fine gold chain.
Necklaces
Both necklaces and neck chains were worn. Neck chains would be wound several times round the neck or worn down over the breast, occasionally with a pendant. Pendants of small bears or other animals or carvings in relief with busts of one or two people are not uncommon, and it is possible that these latter were given as gifts to mark an anniversary or at a wedding.
The Lyons jewel casket included seven necklaces made up of gold beads, precious stones or gold leaves. One, of small sapphires, is 29 cm long, another is of blue glass beads imitating lapis lazuli, and a third is of garnets with a gold fastening and pendant garnets on small gold rings. A double chain of coral, gold and malachite with gold spacers 113 cm long may be for use as a necklace, girdle or hair decoration.
Pins (acus)
For hair or clothes, made of wood, bone, ivory, jet, gold silver or other metal. These were decorated at the head end, sometimes with complex ornamentation in-the-round. Rings
Rings for fingers or thumbs were worn by men and women, sometimes several at a time. They were made from gold, silver, bronze, iron, lead or glass. Some have a small key attached.
Betrothal rings (anulus pronubus) were given, made of iron when gold was restricted, and still popularly of iron even at a later date.
Signet rings were important and were often large and ornate, perhaps with the seal engraved on a gemstone. In fact, engraved gems were popular; a gold ring found in Sussex has a nicolo intaglio depicting a figure of Mercury (nicolo being a crystal of calcium carbonate and intaglio a figure carved out of the stone - the opposite of cameo). And at Rockbourne, a bronze ring with intaglio depicting Vulcan was found. Cameos were made by carving the weathered surface of a gem or pebble in relief, leaving the rest of the stone as a dark background.
Rings set with gold coins only became popular in the late empire.
Torcs
Torcs were a British item of jewellery made during the later Bronze Age from the first century BC onwards. These usually took the form of two circular gold alloy bars twisted together like rope, with ring terminals (decoration soldered onto each end) or loop terminals (formed from the ends of the bars). The Snettisham torc from Norfolk is mid-first century and is made from electrum. Torcs were worn by Celtic warriors and women, and may have been currency jewellery.
Wreaths
An ornamental band of naturalistic or stylised leaves worn on festive occasions or by visitors to the games. The wreath developed later into the diadem, which was more like the modern tiara.
Sources:
Everyday Life in the Roman Empire - Joan Liversedge
An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewellery - Harold Newman
Britannia - Sheppard Frere
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Jewellery