Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of illustrations
- CHAPTER 1 ‘Introduction: On Faith, Objects and Locality’
- CHAPTER 2 ‘But where is Norfolk?’
- CHAPTER 3 ‘Sacred Image and Regional Identity in Late-Prehistoric Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 4 ‘Piety from the Ploughsoil: Religion in Roman Norfolk through Recent Metal-Detector Finds’
- CHAPTER 5 ‘Paganism in Early-Anglo-Saxon East Anglia’
- CHAPTER 6 ‘Devotion, Pestilence and Conflict: The Medieval Wall Paintings of St Mary the Virgin, Lakenheath’
- CHAPTER 7 ‘Here Be Dragons: The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch and Strategies for Survival’
- CHAPTER 8 ‘The Medieval Jews of Norwich and their Legacy’
- CHAPTER 9 ‘Late-Medieval Glass-Painting in Norfolk: Developments in Iconography and Craft c.1250–1540’
- CHAPTER 10 ‘Graffiti and Devotion in Three Maritime Churches’
- CHAPTER 11 ‘Norfolk Wayside Crosses: Biographies of Landscape and Place’
- CHAPTER 12 ‘Landscapes of Faith and Politics in Early-Modern Norwich’
- CHAPTER 13 ‘Practice and Belief: Manifestations of Witchcraft, Magic and Paganism in East Anglia from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day’
- CHAPTER 14 ‘Provinciality and the Victorians: Church Design in Nineteenth-Century East Anglia’
- CHAPTER 15 ‘Maharajah Duleep Singh, Elveden and Sikh Pilgrimage’
- CHAPTER 16 ‘Supernatural Folklore and the Popular Imagination: Re-reading Object and Locality in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 17 ‘Pro Patria Mori: Christian Rallies and War Memorials of Early-Twentieth-Century Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 18 ‘Pagans in Place, from Stonehenge to Seahenge: “Sacred” Archaeological Monuments and Artefacts in Britain’
- CHAPTER 19 ‘Art, Spirit and Ancient Places in Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 20 ‘Sacred Sites and Blessed Objects: Art and Religion in Contemporary Norfolk’
- Bibliography
- Index
CHAPTER 4 - ‘Piety from the Ploughsoil: Religion in Roman Norfolk through Recent Metal-Detector Finds’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of illustrations
- CHAPTER 1 ‘Introduction: On Faith, Objects and Locality’
- CHAPTER 2 ‘But where is Norfolk?’
- CHAPTER 3 ‘Sacred Image and Regional Identity in Late-Prehistoric Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 4 ‘Piety from the Ploughsoil: Religion in Roman Norfolk through Recent Metal-Detector Finds’
- CHAPTER 5 ‘Paganism in Early-Anglo-Saxon East Anglia’
- CHAPTER 6 ‘Devotion, Pestilence and Conflict: The Medieval Wall Paintings of St Mary the Virgin, Lakenheath’
- CHAPTER 7 ‘Here Be Dragons: The Cult of St Margaret of Antioch and Strategies for Survival’
- CHAPTER 8 ‘The Medieval Jews of Norwich and their Legacy’
- CHAPTER 9 ‘Late-Medieval Glass-Painting in Norfolk: Developments in Iconography and Craft c.1250–1540’
- CHAPTER 10 ‘Graffiti and Devotion in Three Maritime Churches’
- CHAPTER 11 ‘Norfolk Wayside Crosses: Biographies of Landscape and Place’
- CHAPTER 12 ‘Landscapes of Faith and Politics in Early-Modern Norwich’
- CHAPTER 13 ‘Practice and Belief: Manifestations of Witchcraft, Magic and Paganism in East Anglia from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day’
- CHAPTER 14 ‘Provinciality and the Victorians: Church Design in Nineteenth-Century East Anglia’
- CHAPTER 15 ‘Maharajah Duleep Singh, Elveden and Sikh Pilgrimage’
- CHAPTER 16 ‘Supernatural Folklore and the Popular Imagination: Re-reading Object and Locality in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 17 ‘Pro Patria Mori: Christian Rallies and War Memorials of Early-Twentieth-Century Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 18 ‘Pagans in Place, from Stonehenge to Seahenge: “Sacred” Archaeological Monuments and Artefacts in Britain’
- CHAPTER 19 ‘Art, Spirit and Ancient Places in Norfolk’
- CHAPTER 20 ‘Sacred Sites and Blessed Objects: Art and Religion in Contemporary Norfolk’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
The religious practices of Roman Britain and the Roman Empire in general have been the subject of many learned books and papers. It is not the intention of this small study to do anything more than consider some of the various categories of material recovered from Norfolk in the last three decades or so, and what that material may tell us about the various gods and goddesses worshipped in Roman Norfolk and the way in which they were revered.
There are practically no inscriptions on stone from the county, which is not surprising given the paucity of anything but flint in the area, and so artefacts recovered with the aid of metal detectors are of particular importance. The objects with which this paper is concerned, discovered as they have been in ploughsoil, have no archaeological context. Thus, there is no evidence for the way in which they were deposited. Nonetheless, these objects can in themselves tell a great deal about religious beliefs in Norfolk during the period of the Roman Empire. Since it stands to reason that objects with a religious function would have been used at religious sites, their discovery can also be used to answer the question of how many such sites existed in Roman Norfolk. It is very unlikely that these objects were casually lost or thrown away. Rather their context is, in the vast majority of cases, votive in nature; these were gifts to the gods that remain to offer mute testimony to the religious beliefs of the people who offered them.
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- Information
- Art, Faith and Place in East AngliaFrom Prehistory to the Present, pp. 50 - 65Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012