Page History

A bone counter or gaming-piece. Counters are common finds on Roman sites and show that gambling was a popular pastime for the soldiers. They were used for accounting too, but that is not as interesting

A rather pretty blue translucent glass bead

A nice chunky bronze stud which could have decorated a piece of furniture or might have had some function in a lock on a chest

A lead luggage tag. It was probably attached by the punched hole to a bundle of supplies of some kind. The writing on it may indicate what that was and how much it was worth, but hasn’t been translated yet. The Romans used an asterix shaped sign to indicate denarii or value (I wish I had known this when I was on site)

A bronze belt-stiffener. A legionary’s belt would have had a few of these - useful as well as shiny when new

One of three lovely bronze fish brooches. They have enamelled eyes and silvered scales. Were there three because they were a badge of something or did a lady wear a shoal of them? Perhaps it showed you were a member of the Caerleon-on-Usk fishing club!

A natural ball of azurite. Azurite is an ore of copper and this may be raw material for copper smithing which was done on site by the legionaries

A beautiful, probably 2nd century, star-shaped bronze plate brooch. There are green and blue enamel panels with a white dot in the centre of the blue panels. The points of the star have roundels filled with red enamel. Quite a rare type of find

Bronze shell-shaped pendant. Another bit of Roman bling

A lovely bronze lion head stud which was probably a decoration on a piece of furniture (perhaps a pay chest?). You can see his cute face on this photo and the iron fitting in the accompanying photo (below)

A furniture fitting in the shape of a very pretty dolphin