I hope you appreciate that I resisted all of the cheap puns that presented themselves when titling this post! What I would like to briefly highlight here is the rather nice coincidence of two objects with a similar theme both discovered recently and geographically very close together. Finds from North Lincolnshire have been of interest to me of late (in the form of a name stamp from South Ferriby, a Cupid statuette from Winteringham and excavations in advance of a coastal cable route) and this post continues that theme.
The two objects in question are copper alloy cockerels, both metal detector finds recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). The first, discovered in October 2017, is a small cast model, only 25mm in height, and representing a bird with a head comb and a rather magnificent tail fan. A circular lug at the base of the model perhaps represents where it attached to a larger object, but more of that below.
The second object was discovered in February 2018 and is clearly very different in character. Here, the bird has two clear legs and moulded wings. An arch of tail feathers and a comb are clearly present, but an integrally-cast loop and surviving hook on the back indicate that it was once suspended rather than freestanding. At 40mm long it is slightly larger than the first example, but it weighs nearly four times as much – 22.88g as opposed to 6.04g.
The two cockerels were found just over two miles apart, south of Winterton and to the west of the line of Ermine Street. The cockerel is well attested as an attribute of Mercury, god of travellers and merchants among other things, and it always tempting to automatically interpret such imagery as being religious in nature. In reality, however, we should not think of things in such binary terms as purely ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. It was perfectly possible for a depiction of an animal to be entirely functional yet still invoke the essence of a particular deity.
The function of these two cockerels, however, remains speculative. The PAS records for them suggest that they formed part of sculptural groups of Mercury and his attendant animals (for example like this fantastic group from St Albans, but I am not so sure. The first and smaller of the two cockerels has the greater potential of being part of such a group, but it is a shame that the PAS photographs do not show the bottom of the object. I suspect that it might have formed the terminal of a pin, as seen here on an example from Bishop Burton near Beverley. The newly discovered Winterton example is remarkably similar in size and design to another North Lincolnshire cockerel find, from the South Ferriby / Barton upon Humber area (pictured below). This has a more defined ‘peg’ at the base, but it too could have originally been a pin terminal.
The second newly discovered cockerel, with the loop, seems less likely to have been a figure standing beside Mercury and other animals – after all, what purpose would the loop have served? The idea that it may have been a steelyard weight is briefly considered but then dismissed in the PAS record, but I think it remains the most plausible suggestion. The weight of the item (22.88g) is not high, but not out of keeping with other steelyard weights which often range between 20 and 30g. Such a weight may have been used for smaller goods, and a connection with Mercury and trade would make a cockerel a suitable motif for such an object. A number of steelyard weights are known from across the Roman world which depict Mercury himself.
These two objects are of course far from the only depictions of cockerels from Roman Lincolnshire, but I can’t discuss them all here. Worthy of passing mention, though, is a bone pin, excavated at Flaxengate in Lincoln in 1947, and displaying a slightly abstract cockerel design. For me it sums up very well the problems we have when trying to read religious symbolism into zoomorphic objects – was this an object of personal devotion, protecting a traveller on their journeys? Simply a hairpin with a chicken on the end? Or actually both of these at the same time?
Roman Lincolnshire Revealed 