Jewellery in hoards: rings, necklaces, chains and pendants

Jewellery is the part of a hoard that brings its owners closest. A Roman gold bracelet from the Hoxne hoard in Suffolk carries the openwork words VTERE FELIX DOMINA IVLIANE, 'use this happily, Lady Juliane'; a gold ring from Erfurt, hidden by a Jewish family in 1349, is topped with a tiny Gothic building and engraved with the Hebrew for 'good luck'. This page covers finger-rings, necklaces, chains, bracelets, earrings, pendants and beads. Brooches, torcs, Viking arm-rings and bracteates have their own pages.

Most hoard jewellery is gold or silver, worked in a small number of techniques that recur across two thousand years. Rings and bracelets were cast or hammered from bar and sheet; filigree adds patterns of fine twisted wire, and late Roman goldsmiths pierced sheet gold into lace-like openwork (opus interrasile). Chains were often made by the loop-in-loop method, links folded through one another into a flexible rope; the four chains of the Hoxne body chain, worn crossed over the chest and back, are built this way. Stones were set in collets or box bezels, and from the Middle Ages onwards coloured enamel shares the surface with gems. Engraved gems (intaglios) in Roman rings could double as seals.

Reading a piece means looking at wear, construction and imagery together. Thetford in Norfolk, buried in the late 4th century, held 22 gold finger-rings, five chain necklaces, pendants and a buckle with a dancing satyr; most of the gold looks fresh and unworn, and some designs hint at Bacchic or pagan cult. Inscriptions, saints' names, posy mottoes and religious symbols tie an object to a faith or a moment, while gemstones trace trade routes. The Cheapside Hoard, probably the working stock of a London goldsmith of the early 17th century, holds Colombian emeralds, Indian diamond, Sri Lankan spinel and Persian turquoise side by side.

For historians the great value of hoard jewellery is that so little else survives. Gold and silver jewellery was routinely melted and remade when fashions changed, so a piece that went into the ground escaped the crucible. Erfurt's silver dress ornaments and belt fittings, Colmar's 15 silver rings and the rings, pendants and chains buried with the Fishpool coins in 1464 are rare survivors of their periods. In England and Wales, an object at least 300 years old with 10 per cent or more gold or silver is treasure and must be reported; Thetford's finder failed to report it at first, and some smaller pieces were probably lost in the haste of digging.