Roman stone ornamental screen - Collections Online | Museum Wales
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Roman stone ornamental screen

Rectangular slab, chipped along the sides, with a large piece missing from the lower edge. The upper surface shows extensive signs of wear in the form of two shallow depressions. The decoration, in relief carving, lies in a square moulded panel, the upper edge of which has been worn away. Set corner-wise within this is a lozenge-shaped panel with moulded border, and filling the space in each angle is a rosette and three leaf-sprays. At the centre is a small simple bust facing the spectator, framed by a laurel wreath with a four-petalled flower at the top. Between the wreath and each of the four angles of the lozenge is a frond. The lower left-hand quarter of the stone has been painted to give an impression of how the screen originally looked.

Discovered on the Endowed Charity School property in 1901.

Brewer, R.J. (1986: 43, No. 62) notes Eric Birley's (Arch. Ael. 4 -xiii,1936: 223-4) suggesion that the worn hollows in the upper surfaces of the Vindolanda screen slabs (reused as paving), with a similar phenomenon exhibited by the two surviving Caerleon screens, were the result, over many years, of the monetary transactions that had taken place beneath the grille.

Reconsideration of the Caerleon screens (see also Amgueddfa Cymru Accession Number 35.118/30.2) by Lewis, M.R.T. (forthcoming, 2025) and comparison of wear and cut marks in the upper surfaces of these screens with large whetstones within the collection of the National Roman Legion Museum, especially from Usk, suggests that they had been extensively used to sharpen blades, e.g. swords, perhaps ritually to embue them with apotropaic or other supernaturally protective qualities derived from or at the fortress aedes.

Part of a screen, probably from a room in the administrative range of the headquarters. Holes in the top carried an iron grille, beneath which pay and savings may have been passed. Part of the stone has been painted to give an idea how the screen may have originally have been coloured.

Roman stone ornamental screen
Image: By permission of Amgueddfa Cymru — Museum Wales
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Collection Area

Archaeology & Numismatics

Item Number

31.78/27.3

Find Information

Site Name: Endowed Junior School, Caerleon

Collection Method: surface find
Date: 1901

Notes: found at the site of the above, near the centre of the fortress.

Measurements

height / mm:810
width / mm:760
thickness / mm:60

Categories

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