Rare and beautiful Roman brooch buried in Scotland may have been 'battle trophy'

The brooch was popular among Roman military figures - and was found buried deep in the foundations of an Iron Age settlement in south west Scotland.

A beautiful and rare Roman brooch may have been taken as a “battle trophy” by an Iron Age community in south-west Scotland and buried in the foundations of their settlement for luck and protection.

The brooch was found following the discovery of an substantial Iron Age settlement on land now owned by William Grant & Sons Girvan Distillery at the Curragh in South Ayrshire.

The Roman brooch found deep in the foundations of an Iron Age settlement. The item was buried in the second century AD. Picture: GUARD Archaeology. | GUARD Archaeology

It is believed the settlement was home to a wealthy farming community, with the brooch found buried deep within the foundation of the palisade that surrounded it.

The brooch has offered fresh insight into how local Britons of south-west Scotland, then the Kingdom of Strathclyde, interacted with the Roman army during the late second century AD, when the area had slipped from the grasp of the Roman Empire.

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Jordan Barbour, of GUARD Archaeology that led the excavation, co-authored the report on the settlement, the brooch and the possible theories that link the two.

He said: “This exotic brooch and others like it typically date to the late second century AD, and are most commonly found along the borders of the Roman Empire, in eastern Gaul, Switzerland and the Rhineland.

“Their distribution pattern suggests that these brooches were particularly popular among members of the Roman military forces. So it’s likely that it came north of Hadrian’s Wall on the cloak of a Roman soldier tasked with garrisoning the Empire’s northernmost frontier.”

He said there was no evidence the brooch had been worn by the local Briton living in the Iron Age settlement.

Instead, it had been buried as a foundation deposit, a votive sacrifice of sorts, when constructing the timber palisade around their roundhouse, he said.

Mr Barbour added: “It’s difficult to say exactly why the brooch was deposited within the palisade trench. But we know that ritualised foundation offerings are observed across many cultures, typically enacted to grant protection to a household, and this is certainly a possibility here.”

He said there were a few “plausible scenarios” as to how it ended up at the settlement.

“It’s the only Roman artefact recovered from the site,” he said. “If the inhabitants had established regular trade with Roman Britain, we might expect to find a greater variety of Roman objects, but this is a solidly native context.

“Rather, the brooch is more likely to have been obtained through ad-hoc exchange with Roman troops operating north of Hadrian’s Wall, perhaps even taken in battle as a trophy.”

The Curragh Iron Age dwelling was situated on top of a rocky plateau, with a steep escarpment acting to deny access from the immediate north. It may well be the case the dwelling was sited here and enclosed with a strong timber palisade, due to defensive concerns, the archaeologist said.

Although there were no contemporary Roman forts nearby after the abandonment of the Antonine Wall earlier in the second century AD, an earlier first century AD Roman marching camp some just over a mile to the south-west illustrates the military presence in the area.

Conflict between the local Britons and Roman soldiers is likely to have been a recurring element of Rome’s intermittent occupation of south-west Scotland, Mr Barbour said.

This palisaded roundhouse was not the only archaeological feature the GUARD Archaeologists found at the Curragh. The enduring appeal of the plateau was proven by an earlier unenclosed roundhouse that was radiocarbon dated to around the seventh century BC, many centuries before the Romans arrived in Britain.

And traces of even more ancient inhabitation were evidenced by the recovery of pottery dating to the early Neolithic period, when a large timber monument was constructed here, between 3,700 and 3,500 BC.