Researchers believe that a delicate bronze cup discovered in a field in the village of Berlanga de Duero in central Spain was a memento brought home from Britain by a Roman soldier some 1,900 years ago. The cup, which measures 4.5 inches wide, 3.2 inches tall, and just a twentieth of an inch thick, contains enamel depictions of a series of fortifications along its base and the names of four forts from Hadrian’s Wall along its rim. (See “The Wall at the End of the Empire.”) It is one of a handful of similar cups portraying the wall’s forts to have been found in the last few centuries, though this is the first to name forts from the wall’s eastern section.
Based on the style of the cup and the forts listed on it, researchers believe the vessel was produced in the mid-second century a.d. One of the forts whose name appears on the cup, Condercum, was completed in a.d. 130, and two others, Vindobala and Onno, were destroyed by fire at the end of the second century a.d. The fourth fort was called Cilurnum. Isotope analysis of lead in the cup as well as of the enamel used to decorate it suggests the object was crafted in northern Britain, in the vicinity of the wall. The cup’s owner was likely part of a Roman military unit, possibly the Cohors I Celtiberorum, which originated in the Berlanga area and was stationed along Hadrian’s Wall in the late first and second centuries a.d. “We think the cup was customized by the person who was going to have it, and the decoration was related to his experience during his military life,” says archaeologist Jesús García Sánchez of the Archaeological Institute of Mérida. “The inclusion of the forts’ names made it a very nice souvenir to bring back home.”
