Description

Summary: Iron Age terret ring, used to to guide the reins of a horse pulling a chariot, found with the use of a metal detector in September 2011, found in the Devizes area.

Research results

A Roman copper alloy terret, found by Metal Detectorists in the Devizes area in 2011. Although this terret is quite unusual in its form, skirted terrets in general are quite common appear in Britain in the mid 1st century AD; it has been widely assumed that they were introduced by the Roman army, however they were ultimately derived from continental celtic metal working traditions which the inhabitants of Britain would have been familiar with since at least the Late Bronze Age, and some possible skirted terrets are known from hoards in this period, although they are rare. This terret can be compared to a similar example from a late 3rd-4th c. context at Chester.

This terret was examined by Anna Lewis (2015) as part of her PhD thesis on Iron Age and Roman terrets. Making use of new discoveries, particularly from PAS data, she was able to refine the typology and dating of the form, and add nuance to discussion sof their development. She identifies the earliest terrets as dating to 5th century BC in graves in the East of the Country, and divides the subsequent corpus into early, late and imported types. She found that terrets often appear to have been deliberately deposited and found that they were found in the greatest quantities in the North East, followed by the South West and East Midlands.