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Metal Detector Find Reveals Grisly Romano-British Slave Trade


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Cast in bronze the figure crouches with his elbows and knees drawn together. A rope starting around the neck also binds his wrists and ankles. In the year of the bicentenary of the Parliamentary Act to abolish the Atlantic slave trade a rare Roman figurine that references an earlier trade in slaves has been discovered near Andover in Hampshire.

 

The small bronze decoration came to light during a metal detecting rally organised by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in Hampshire in June 2007...

 

24 Hour Museum

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Cast in bronze the figure crouches with his elbows and knees drawn together. A rope starting around the neck also binds his wrists and ankles. In the year of the bicentenary of the Parliamentary Act to abolish the Atlantic slave trade a rare Roman figurine that references an earlier trade in slaves has been discovered near Andover in Hampshire.

 

The small bronze decoration came to light during a metal detecting rally organised by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in Hampshire in June 2007...

 

24 Hour Museum

 

It depends. Another way of looking at it is that he's a prisoner of war. Slavery's been abolished, but the taking of prisoners of war hasn't.

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Cast in bronze the figure crouches with his elbows and knees drawn together. A rope starting around the neck also binds his wrists and ankles. In the year of the bicentenary of the Parliamentary Act to abolish the Atlantic slave trade a rare Roman figurine that references an earlier trade in slaves has been discovered near Andover in Hampshire.

 

The small bronze decoration came to light during a metal detecting rally organised by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in Hampshire in June 2007...

 

24 Hour Museum

 

It depends. Another way of looking at it is that he's a prisoner of war. Slavery's been abolished, but the taking of prisoners of war hasn't.

Salve! Nope, slavery was still there and was going to stay for some centuries.

I believe that in the Roman Empire, "slave" and "prisoner of war" were almost synonymous.

It is well known, but always amazing, how an image tells more than a thousand words. It is no surprise that people like the Cimbri and the Jews preferred suicide to slavery.

Edited by ASCLEPIADES
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The second or third century AD still had a strong slave trade, although without wars of conquest the numbers of prisoners or war declined rapidly. Most of Trajans captives fought their last in the colosseum. The figure represented is being taken in a literal sense - that a bound man is obviously enslaved. Not so. True, it might represent a POW, but it might also be a criminal, and the figurine is commemorative of justice of one sort or another. It might possibly also be that the figurine is a religious symbol of some kind, since I find it odd that so many were found in britain as opposed to the empire, and that the slave trade in britain was never recorded as being particularly bigger in scale than the mediterranean.

 

The fact is the report is second guessing the motive behind this artifact. It would help a great deal if the circumstances of the find were noted, because the surroundings of a find are often as revelaing as the find itself.

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