1. Lily Wonham, session 6, 8th-27th August.
What it was made of, popular motifs
and designs, links with trade, and who
wore what: a reflection of society

2.  Roman jewellery often had a practical function
beyond just ‘dressing up’.
 For example:
 Brooches
 Fibula
 Seal rings
 Perfume pendants
 Bulla

4.  Links with trade: due to their large Empire, the
Romans had access to a diverse range of precious and
semi-precious materials to fashion jewellery out of. E.g.
The ‘Amber Route’.
 Roman designs were adapted to local materials in each
province, and local design motifs also incorporated.
E.g. Fossilised wood ‘jet’ from Northern England.
 Common materials:
 Glass beads and pearls in earlier times. Toward the fall of the
Roman Empire exotic gems from India and the Far East were
plentiful, including blue sapphire and topaz from India or Sri
Lanka.
 Lots of gold! And bronze and bone. Silver used less often.
 Emerald; amethyst; garnet; topaz; rubies; diamond.
 Coins sometimes used to make jewellery.

5.  Cameos
 Gold bracelets styled as snakes- symbolised
immortality
 Gold rings often had relief carvings
 The gold ‘hemisphere’
 Much Roman jewellery resembled Greek and
Etruscan jewellery but had motifs borrowed
from other cultures.

7.  Roman women would wear a wide variety of jewellery: men
could wear other types but most tended to wear just rings,
particularly their seal ring.
 ‘Women cannot partake of magistracies, priesthoods, triumphs,
badges of office, gifts, or spoils of war; elegance, finery, and
beautiful clothes are women's badges, in these they find joy and
take pride, this our forebears called the women's world.’
(Livy, History of Rome 34.5) This quote records an argument
for the repeal of a Roman wartime law restricting the
amount of jewellery a woman could wear. However,
women did not have much differentiation in dress so high-
class women needed to wear jewellery in order to mark out
their class and stand out.
 Bullas were pendents given to babies and worn through
childhood. They contained amulet symbols for protection,
security and wealth.

9.  The quartz bead found in the Roman city was
likely once part of a necklace. The bead is large-
it was probably worn by a higher class
individual.
 Rock quartz was mined all over the Empire,
including in the Alps, particularly France. They
are also found in Germany.