The Traprain Law Treasure

Traprain Law, a prominent hill in East Lothian, carries a hillfort that in the Roman Iron Age was a major local political centre, well north of Hadrian's Wall. Excavations there have produced a wealth of Roman finds, evidence of long contact with the Empire. On 12 May 1919, during excavations on the upper part of the hill, the diggers came on a pit dug inside a cluster of houses. In it was a heap of flattened, folded and cut-up silver.

Weighing just over 23 kg, it is the largest hoard of Roman hacksilver yet known. Most of it was once high-status Roman tableware: platters and bowls for serving food at feasts, cups and jugs for wine, and spoons. There is also silver from the bath and dressing table, such as fluted basins, cosmetic pots and mirror fragments, a few belt fittings and a brooch, and a handful of silver siliquae of Valens, Arcadius and Honorius, all clipped in the way typical of Britain after Roman rule ended.

Many owners are represented. Different sets have been mixed, and graffiti on the vessels record a number of names. The decoration is a mixture too: a jug carries scenes from the Old and New Testaments, while other pieces show pagan figures such as Venus rising from the sea.

Early scholars saw the treasure as barbarian loot, Roman plate grabbed in a raid south of the Wall and chopped up by people who cared only for the metal. Closer study has changed that picture. Many of the cuts were made carefully, and some groups of fragments match Roman weight standards closely; one set of dish fragments weighs almost exactly eight Roman ounces. That suggests the silver had already been turned into bullion inside the Roman world, perhaps in a financial crisis, and was then sent north as payment, perhaps a diplomatic gift to a friendly ruler or wages for military service. Some pieces were cut more than once, as if they had passed through several hands.

On Traprain Law the silver was valued as raw material. Crucibles from the hill show that silver was worked there, and the finds from Traprain include a massive silver chain probably made from reused Roman silver. Traprain is therefore a key to how Roman wealth seeded the early medieval silver jewellery of Scotland.

After the find the Edinburgh silversmiths Brook & Son annealed and reshaped many pieces back to their original form, sometimes smoothing away the cut marks, and also sold replicas, a few adapted to modern taste. The National Museum of Scotland has shown the treasure almost continuously since 1920.