A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE view.^ But the coins and alleged pottery are hardly conclusive evidence, and Mr. Willis-Bund informs me that iron ore was largely brought down the river to be smelted with wood in the sixteenth century : similar scoria, which can be dated by documents, appear to exist at Powick. A gold coin of Tiberius (Cohen, No. 1 5) was lately found in the Severn near Pitchcroft. (4) Another object found in the northern part of the town is a small and not ungraceful bronze vase from Sansome Fields, now in the Worcester Museum. (5) The centre of the town has yielded fewer remains. Drain-laying in Broad Street in 1797 and in High Street in 1853 and 1896 revealed more scoria, apparently concreted with pebbles to form what was con- sidered by the discoverers a roadway running north and south, but again we have no clear proof of Roman origin. Some walling and tiles thought to be Roman have been found in Swithin Street, but their age is doubtful.* A fibula was dug up in Copenhagen Street in 1857. (6) An unquestionably Roman object from this quarter was found in 1844, at a depth of 18 feet, under 12 High Street. It is a little bronze statuette (fig. 2) 2| inches long, of an undraped female figure, with one hand on her lips, the other behind her and her feet crossed. Several more or less similar figures are known to archaeologists. They were for- merly explained as representations of an obscure Roman goddess of silence, Angerona, but this view has long been abandoned and they are now recognized to be amulets against the evil eye, the hand being placed on the lips to prevent evil influences entering thereby. Some specimens have a small loop or hole by which they could be suspended.' (7) Roman remains are commonest at the south end of the modern town. Noteworthy discoveries were made about 1833 during the removal of the Castle Mound, which used to occupy a site immediately south- cJarm ^or Amulet. ^^^^ °^ *^^ Cathedral, near the river. This mound was of Saxon or Norman origin, and at its base the labourers found some eighty or ninety coins, including several of the first century (seven of Claudius for instance), fibulas, bronze bells and pottery, including Samian, and among the Samian one piece which might 1 Treadway Nash, Collections fir the Hist, of Worcestershire, Supplement (issued 1799), p. 97; Andrew Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, ii. (1698) p. 162, cited by Nash, ii. p. cviii. ; Val. Green, Hist, of Worcester, i. 10 note. The 1698 issue of Yarranton's work, published posthumously, is not in any library accessible to me, and I have cited it after Nash. The ' many thousand tons ' sounds an exaggeration. 8 Nash, Supplement, p. 97 ; Allies, p. 2 ; Bozward, in Berrow's Worcester Journal, Oct. Nov. 1889 ; piece of concrete in Worcester Museum ; information from Mr. Willis-Bund. 3 Allies, p. 13, with figure ; brief mentions, Archaological "Journal, ii. 74 ; Journal of the British Archaol. Assoc, ii. 48. For the whole class of figures see Otto Jahn's paper IJeber den Aherglauhen des bosen Blickes bei den Alten, in the Berichte iiber den Abh. des kon. sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Z.U Lei/>zig,vn. (1855) 47-49 ; and Wissowa, in Roscher's Lexikon der Mytholo^e, s.v. Angerona ; compare Frazer's Golden Bough (ed. 2, 1901) i. 313. 206
