Borderlines

Extract

Chapter 3

THE AGE OF MAN

Just south of Hoxne on the road to Eye is an old brickyard, unprepossessing in itself, that for geologists and prehistorians remains one of the most revered sites in Europe. In the late 18th century the land was owned by John Hookham Frere and it was here in 1797 while digging brickearth that workmen unearthed several curiously shaped flints at a depth of some twelve feet below ground level. Their size and shape were sufficiently distinctive to draw the discovery to the attention of the landowner’s father, John Frere, who lived at Roydon Hall ( see p89). John Frere, like many gentlemen of the day, was an amateur antiquarian, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities and was able to recognise the significance of the finds.

He lost little time in writing to the Society but though his letter was published in Archaeologia in 1800 his conclusions were so radical by the standards of the day that it received nothing more than a polite reply thanking Frere for his ‘curious and interesting communication’. Today it is regarded as the beginning of scientific archaeology.

What Frere had identified were flints shaped as hand axes ‘fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals’. Equally important was his observation that they were discovered below water-lain deposits on a spur of land some fifteen metres above the floodplain of the Waveney. The implications that ‘the landscape had altered considerably since the hand axes had been deposited’ were clear to Frere; prompting his oft-quoted remark that the worked flints would appear to belong ‘to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the present world’. It is worth remembering that membership of the Society at the time consisted largely of clergymen, many of whom still held fast to the Creationist doctrine propounded by Archbishop Usher in the early 17th century, namely that the world was created in 4004BC. The bones of extinct animals found in association with the hand axes were explained as a product of the Great Flood.

Reports at the time that two loads of chippings (flint flakes) were carted away to mend the roads lends weight to the suggestion that this was a site for the manufacture of flint implements. It was another sixty year s before the importance of Frere’s radical interpretation was fully recognised when, in 1858, two English archaeologists, Prestwich and Evans, visited Abbeville in nor thern France where hand axes had also been found. Convinced that humans were contemporary with extinct forms of elephant and rhinoceros they returned to London and to the Society of Antiquities where Evans saw the hand axes in a display case that Frere had given to the Society. They were exactly like the flint tools he had seen in France. Prestwich submitted a paper to the Society later that year (1860) in which he and Evans concluded that Frere’s obser vations were correct.

Subsequent work at Hoxne has confirmed that the brickear th deposits were from the bed of a lake formed in a hollow left during the retreat of the Anglian Glaciation c.400,000 year s ago. Towards the end of this period, known now as the Hoxnian Interglacial, the hand axes are thought to have been fashioned on the edge of the lake c.370,000BC. As a result of Frere’s discovery and the juxtaposition of artefacts with animal bones and stratification evidence Hoxne is now regarded as one of the most significant prehistoric sites (Middle Pleistocene) in Europe. The significance of Frere’s pioneering work is commemorated by a beautiful slate plaque at Finningham church in nor th Suffolk where he is buried in the family vault.

The importance of Hoxne’s role in the archaeology of Western Europe was further enhanced in November 1992 when a local man stumbled upon an astonishing hoard of Roman treasure. His discovery may not compare with Frere’s hand axes in the history of human evolution but it remains one of the largest hoards of Roman gold and silver ever unearthed in Britain. Equally remarkable is the proximity of the two find sites. The brickearth pit that had yielded up the hand axes is on a spur of higher ground between the river Dove and its tributary stream, the Gold Brook. Just south of here in a field on the other (west) side of the road to Eye is where Eric Lawes made his own momentous discovery two hundred years later.

The tenant farmer had asked Lawes to use his retirement present, a metal detector, to locate a lost hammer. The hammer was eventually found but not before loud bleeps from the detector led to the most astonishing discovery; some 15,000 coins minted in Gaul and Italy between 350 and 400BC and 200 other gold and silver objects buried originally in a wooden chest. Together they represented the accumulated wealth of an affluent family buried for safe keeping during troubled times at the end of Roman rule in Britain. Lawes immediately reported his find – the land was owned by the County Council – and the following day an emergency dig by Suffolk Archaeological Unit recovered all the objects. They were taken to the British Museum and after years of meticulous conservation are now on display together with the hammer that led to the discovery.

Although much larger coin hoards have come to light recently, the Hoxne hoard was, at the time, the largest collection of late 4th century coins found anywhere in the Roman Empire. Important though they are as a dating mechanism it is the fine workmanship of the gold and silver objects that makes the hoard so special. Among the pure gold jewellery is a rare and elaborate body chain and a unique group of bracelets; a matching pair with animals and huntsmen in low relief and others decorated with pierced work. The most outstanding incorporates an inscription wishing good luck to a woman called Juliana.

The silverware includes twenty ladles, a matching set of nineteen spoons, many engraved with mythical sea creatures, and personal toiletry accessories such as toothpicks and ear-cleaners. At first glance the most beautiful pieces look like statuettes but are also table utensils. A prancing tigress with stripes inlaid with black neillo is one of a pair of handles from a large vase or wine jug that appears to have been deliberately removed, its bullion value sufficient to ensure its survival. There are, in addition, four delicately finished pepperpots, one in the likeness of a late Roman empress, one depicting Hercules grappling with the giant Antaeus and the other two of animals.

Archaeologists think that because the hoard is missing some of the more common types of jewelry and larger tableware dishes it may represent only part of the family’s wealth. In 1781 farm labourers unearthed a lead box upstream at Clint Farm on the far side of Eye. Inside was a hoard of some 650 Roman coins. Little else is known about the find, and the contents of the box were gradually lost but, less than four miles apart, the two hoards may have been part of one family’s wealth dispersed across its estate. There is as yet no evidence of Roman settlement in the immediate vicinity but remains of the owner’s villa may lie undisturbed somewhere in the Dove valley. The site of the Hoxne Treasure is only two miles from the Roman marching station at Scole where the Pye Road (the present A140) from Norwich to Colchester crossed the Waveney.

There are clear artistic parallels with the Thetford Treasure found in 1979 on Gallows Hill overlooking the Little Ouse Valley; both hoards include collections of late Roman spoons. The crucial difference is that many of the Thetford spoons are inscribed to Faunus, the first evidence for the cult of this minor nature god in Britain, whi le the Hoxne inscriptio ns are all Chris tian bearing the Chi -Rho monogram. One spoon carries the more explicit invocation VIVAS IN DEO/May you live in God.

The other main difference between the two hoards is more concerned with the circumstances surrounding their discover y. The Thetford hoard only came to light some time after it had been excavated by a ‘night hawk’ using a metal detector without permission. By the time they were found some of the items had probably been lost to the black market, and the archaeological context had been destroyed. By contrast the Hoxne hoard was excavated professionally thanks to the swift action of Eric Lawes. The hoard was declared Treasure Trove in 1993 and valued at £1.75million (double that today), a substantial sum divided equally between the far mer and the finder. With his share Mr Lawes left Hoxne to the strains of ‘If I had a Hammer’ coming from the Swan Inn, for a nice new bungalow in nearby Denham.