by Tess Machling & Roland Williamson
(This was cropped from a previous paper as it didn't fit, but thought it was worth putting here as a blog: not peer reviewed, not definitive, but might spark some ideas....) At present, the sourcing of gold used to make Iron Age artefacts from the United Kingdom is unresolved. For Irish material, work by Warner …
During the process of creating the Torc Treasury database, I kept noticing multiple fragments of the same, very distinctive, gold alloy torc coming up in Snettisham Hoard F. [Well, I think they're all from Hoard F, the problem being that although they all - bar one, but more about that later! - have a 1991 …
Continue reading "Torc fragment cross-joins AKA how to make a torc jigsaw!"
[An open access PDF of this paper (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.4039630) can be downloaded HERE] Abstract This paper examines the Grotesque torc and its repairs in relation to the hoards from Ken Hill, Snettisham. It looks at the materials used to repair/modify torcs, and their likely source in Hoards B/C and F. It suggests an alternative biography …
Since we started working with Iron Age torcs, we've always been fascinated by Ray Williamson and Tom Rout, the two East Anglian ploughmen who first found torcs at Snettisham. Usually mentioned as an aside in the original archaeology reports by Brailsford (1951), Clarke (1954) etc - and often with their names mispelt - Roll and …
The Heinz 57 terminal from Snettisham (thus named by us according to its place in the Norwich Castle Museum display and its rather unusual form) has been largely ignored in academic literature. Being known more formally as 1991,0501.45 in the British Museum catalogue, this terminal was found in the mixed Hoard F from Snettisham. This …
Continue reading "Heinz 57: an unusual torc terminal from Snettisham."
Gold is a very unusual material. Created by supernovae, and deposited on earth by asteroids, it is a finite resource. Estimates suggest that the total amount of gold mined to date is around 190,000 metric tons: but due to the density of the material (it is denser than lead) this would create a single cube …
Continue reading "No goldfinches were harmed in the making of this blog….."
When we look at torcs, the first stage of analysis usually involves photos. We have a lot of photos: my Kindle Fire currently contains about 6000 of them, cribbed from websites and online catalogues, or taken by Roll and myself. That's a lot of pics. By going through these photos on a regular basis we …
Prehistoric goldworkers of any period exploited a variety of techniques to create torcs. There are a number of torcs which are in their rawest form just a torc – a generally round-section rod bent to make a neck ring and fitted out with the simplest of terminals. These range in type from the bar torcs …
Background: In May 1996, a metal detectorist working fields close to Stowmarket found a fragment of gold from a torus torc terminal. The field has been walked and detected regularly over the years and no other Iron Age material has been found in this location. The exact find spot is known and recorded, but …
Snettisham inevitably - being the largest collection of torcs and torc pieces ever found and with the Great torc to the fore - tends to dominate the Iron Age torc world. It should not, however, be forgotten that there are upwards of fifty other torcs represented in other parts of Britain, when incomplete examples, or …
The Big Book of Torcs 