I am indebted to Mr. R. H. Forster for a photograph and squeeze of the tile.
(7) Found in a peat-bog in Upper Weardale, in August 1913, two bronze skillets or 'paterae', of the usual saucepan shape, the larger weighing 15-1/2 oz., the smaller 8-1/2 oz. Each bore a stamp on the handle; the smaller had also a graffito on the rim of the bottom made by a succession of little dots. An uninscribed bronze ladle was found with the 'paterae':
| (a) on the larger patera: | |
| (b) on the smaller: | |
| (c) punctate: |
The stamps of the Campanian bronze-worker Cipius Polybius are well known. Upwards of forty have been found, rather curiously distributed (in the main) between Pompeii and places on or near the Rhenish and Danubian frontiers, in northern Britain, and in German and Danish lands outside the Roman Empire. The stamped 'paterae' of other Cipii and other bronze-workers have a somewhat similar distribution; it seems that the objects were made in the first century A.D., in or near Pompeii, and were chiefly exported to or beyond the borders of the Empire. Their exact use is still uncertain, I have discussed them in the Archaeological Journal, xlix, 1892, pp. 228-31; they have since been treated more fully by H. Willers (Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor, 1901, p. 213, and Neue Untersuchungen über die römische Bronzeindustrie, 1907, p. 69).
I have to thank Mr. W. M. Egglestone, of Stanhope, for information and for rubbings of the stamps. The E in the first stamp seems clear on the rubbing; all other examples have here I· or I. In the second stamp, the conclusion might be BI·F. The graffito was first read INVINDA; it is, however, certainly as given above.
(8) Found at Holt, eight miles south of Chester (see above, [p. 15]), in the autumn of 1914, built upside down into the outer wall of a kiln, a centurial stone of the usual size and character, 10 inches long, 7-8 inches high, with letters (3/4-1 inch tall) inside a rude label
c(enturia) C(a)esoniana, set up by the century under Caesonius.
Like another centurial stone found some time ago at Holt (Eph. Epigr. ix. 1035), this was not found in situ; the kiln or other structure into the wall of which it was originally inserted must have been pulled down and its stones used up again.