The Winchester Hoard

The two Winchester torcs do not look like any other British Iron Age neck rings. Instead of twisted bars or ropes of wire, they are made of fine gold wire worked into a flexible woven chain, finished with terminals decorated in tiny gold granules and filigree. The techniques are Mediterranean, at home in the workshops of the Roman or Hellenistic world, yet the jewellery was buried in a Hampshire field decades before the Roman invasion.

The hoard was found in the autumn and winter of 2000 by a metal detectorist working a ploughed field near Winchester over several visits. He reported the first pieces, the brooches, through the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and archaeologists from the British Museum examined the spot. They found no sign of a settlement, temple or burial. The jewellery seems to have been buried on its own, probably on a small hilltop that was then wooded.

There are two matching sets. Each has a torc, a pair of bow brooches and a bracelet. One pair of brooches is still linked by a gold chain, the way such brooches were worn to fasten a cloak at both shoulders; the chain for the other pair was not found. One bracelet had been broken in half. The gold is very pure, 91 to 99 per cent by X-ray fluorescence analysis, and the whole group weighs about 1.16 kg. One torc is noticeably larger than the other, which has led to the suggestion that the sets were made for a man and a woman.

Gold brooches are rare in Iron Age Britain; this was only the third find of its kind. The brooches are of late La Tène types and allow the hoard to be dated to about 75-25 BC. The combination of local forms with foreign craftsmanship is the puzzle. A British Museum curator who studied the hoard described the torcs as made outside Britain but to British taste, chunky and showy pieces that a Roman would never have worn.

The most popular explanation is diplomacy. In the decades after Caesar's expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC, Rome cultivated relations with rulers in southern England, and lavish gifts were one way to do it. The hoard has been linked, speculatively, with Commius, a Gaulish leader who first served Caesar, later turned against him and is recorded as ruling the Atrebates of southern Britain. Whether these were his, or a gift to someone like him, cannot be proved.

The jewellery was declared treasure at a coroner's inquest and valued at £350,000, at the time the highest reward under the Treasure Act 1996, shared between the finder and the landowner. The British Museum bought it with a £90,000 grant from the National Art Collections Fund and support from the British Museum Friends and the National Heritage Memorial Fund.