‘Just a little bit’: figurine of Venus from Roman Colchester

Yesterday (29th January), Trust volunteer Wendie was marking yet more archaeological material in the main room of the Roman circus centre. Yesterday the material was from our site at the Flagstaff House complex, which is not far from the circus centre in the old garrison at Colchester. We have recently completed an excavation on the site, and we are now undertaking an archaeological watching brief during the residential development of the site. Wendie found a small mystery object, encrusted with soil, in the material, and we identified it as part of a small Roman figurine! This is exciting, as we don’t retrieve many Roman figurines or parts of figurines, even here in the archaeological hotspot of Colchester. Wendie cleaned the figurine fragment, and Trust pottery specialist Steve Benfield tentatively identified it as a Roman figurine made of pipeclay (china clay) and representing the goddess Venus or a goddess who is known as a ‘pseudo-Venus’.

The ‘pseudo-Venus’ resembles the classical Venus, but she would have been associated with a Romano-Celtic domestic fertility cult (Handbook to life in ancient Rome, by L Adkins & R Adkins, 1994). The fragment includes the goddess’s two feet and part of her cloak on a small pedestal. Steve thinks that the goddess would have been naked and tastefully draped with a cloak, which also functioned as a support for the figure. There is a complete example from London which shows the same pedestal as our fragment, formed of a hollow hemisphere. There are finds of pseudo-Venus figurines from along Hadrian’s Wall, with three from Housesteads Roman fort, one from Binchester, and fragments of ten from Caerleon, one of which is very similar to ours. We discovered two fragments of these figurines during our large excavations in Colchester town centre in 1971-79.

Roman houses included small shrines with figurines of gods and goddesses and these would have formed part of the daily religious life of the residents. However, pseudo-Venus figurines may have been broken and deposited in special places as part of a religious rite. Six of the figurines have been found on the rock outcrop of Nornour off the Scilly Isles: it is thought that these were ritually broken and deposited in a shrine as votive offerings.*

Trust archaeologist Robin Mathieson is conducting the watching brief on behalf of our clients Taylor Wimpey.

The images show the figurine fragment (the two feet and part of the cloak on the pedestal) and Wendie holding the fragment [image to follow]. The second photo. is of an example from Canterbury, published by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust on their web-site at www.canterburytrust.co.uk/imgpost/faces-31/ – this shows what our figurine is missing!

* From the online abstract of Portable goddesses: the use and significance of pipeclay figurines of Venus in the Northern Roman provinces from the first-third centuries CE (by C Drakeman, 2008):  ‘… the Venus figurines were the most heavily produced and widely distributed of all pipeclay objects … The archaeology of the figurines … highlights important finds from a variety of locations and contexts, including temples, graves, houses, and baths, all of which indicate a strong connection between pipeclay figurines of Venus and the cult of the Mother Goddess, as well as an important role for statuettes in rituals of death…‘.

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