Copper alloy vessel
Comment
The vessel was found without bottom, which was found years later near the findspot.
The neck is bent outwards.
Height: 15 cm; Diameter max: 12.6 cm; Diameter bottom: 7 cm; Diameter rim: 90; Diameter neck: 81; Thickness: 1 mm; Volume 0.50 liters; Weight 510 g. Weight bottom: 19 g.
The handle and the rim (and its hinged lid?) are missing. The neck has been reworked, perhaps cut and flared by hammering after the disappearance of the handle.
The overall profile is ovoid, regular, "olive"-shape, with a sub-vertical base and an upper flange flared at about 45 degrees. Several traces of hits are visible on the body, as well as scratches and areas striated by friction, all largely due to the agricultural work.
The upper and lower rims have some short joints, some of which are due to shear cutting (?). While the lower rim is relatively regular, the upper rim shows irregular micro-cracks, probably resulting from stretching by hammering (hardening). The metal, almost uniformly patinated, nevertheless shows numerous whitish vacuolar changes, probably recent, localized essentially in the upper external and internal part of the container.
Traces of attachment of the bottom can be observed at the base of the vessel’s body. There are two types: a probably stanniferous impasto on the outside of the base (welding?); on the other hand, four perforations of a diameter less than one millimeter in the upper zone of this impasto, indicating an assembly or a repair.
Some cracks at the top of the base could indicate that the bottom, too, has been modified and that the base has been shortened.
In the upper third of the body, there is a sub-circular impression due to both a clear variation of the patina and traces that may correspond either, again, to a solder with tin, or to the partial disappearance of the patina locally more fragile. This impression is very probably that of the foot of the handle (can represent a palm, a mask or a stylized leaf...) and its position in the upper part of the vase clearly indicates that the object has not changed of orientation on the occasion of the transformations which affected it, and without doubt also that the neck was clearly shortened.
The bottom, discovered separately several years after the body, but in the same place, is partially shredded. It is made from a sheet of bronze thinner than that of the body, and its patina is greener. It has a circular base portion with a diameter of about 70 mm, with a number of micro perforations due to wear and / or oxidation. A vertical part, slightly flared, 10 to 12 mm high. The two parts are connected by a soft hull that makes a very slight foot.
Inside, there is a green deposit in the central zone, which is probably copper-bearing. The vertical part has inside an impasto comparable to that of the base of the body, but it does not show a perforation like this one. If it is indeed the bottom corresponding to the jug which contained the treasure, the absence of perforation excludes the hypothesis of a riveting in favor of that of a consolidation using wire (or bands metal terminated with a sharp end) attached to the bottom of the body and passing outside and underneath the bottom probably in a cross arrangement. This consolidation device, which has had to alter the tightness of the vase, can be explained by the need to strengthen the fragile bottom, possibly during the change of destination of the jug: the weight of the currencies (in total ten times that of the volume of water likely to be contained by the vase) that was expected to be deposited could justify this device.
If so, it had to be made before the complete deposit of coins (the latter including two large well differentiated series) since it was necessary to bend inside the base wire or metal tips, an operation that could not be performed easily after the transformation of the cervix (originally probably too narrow and too high). Perhaps it is due to the need to strengthen the bottom of the vessel. (Estiot 1997, 90-91)
Preservation
body
Form
Jug
Material
Copper alloy
Hoard
Objects:
This container doesn't have any objects associated to it
Coins:
This container doesn't have any coins associated to it
