The Frasnes Hoard was accidentally unearthed in 1864 by foresters digging out the roots of a tree near Frasnes-lez-Buissenal in Hainaut, Belgium. The torcs and some other pieces are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[1]
Along with at least eighty uninscribed coins of types often found in Gaul and Britain and associated with the Belgic tribes of Morini and Nervii, which were dated by John Evans to ca. 80 BC,[2] the hoard discovered at Frasnes also contained two characteristically Gallic Late La Tène style gold torcs, one plain with flattened-ball terminals, the other with repoussé decoration of a frontal bull's head among raised facetted scrolls[3] some of which manifested a design repertory comparable to finds in Britain.[4] The torc was constructed of sheet gold over an iron ring wrapped in a hard cement. There was also a ring "nearly 1+5⁄8 inches [41 mm] in diameter",[5] too large in diameter to be a finger ring, yet too small to be a bracelet or armband; it had continuous granular ornament of globules of gold soldered together round into outer face.
Notes
edit- ^ connaitre la wallonie, "c. IIe siècle av. J-C : torques en or de Frasnes-lez-Buissenal"
- ^ Described and illustrated in accompanying engravings as with plain convex obverses with the schematic horse above a crescent and pellet by John Evans, "On some gold ornaments and Gaulish coins found together at Frasnes in Belgium", The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, new series 4 (1864:96-101); Evans noted a previous article by Renier Chalon in Revue de la Numismatique Belge.
- ^ The repoussé gold torc was in Alastair Bradley Martin's Guennol collection, illustrated by Thomas P.F. Hoving, "'Valuables and Ornamental Items': The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair Bradley Martin" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin new series, 28.3 (November 1969:147-160) p. 152. It is now conserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- ^ Comparison with the torc from the "Broighter Gold" hoard in Northern Ireland and the gold alloy (electrum) torc from one of the hoards on Ken Hill, near Snettisham, were instanced by N. K. Sandars, Prehistoric Art in Europe "Insular La Tène and the problem of La Tène art", 1992:409.
- ^ Evans 1864:97