# The Traprain Law Treasure > Unknown Roman silversmiths (multiple workshops, Gaul and the Mediterranean) - Individual vessels late 3rd century to mid-5th century AD. The hoard was assembled over decades and concealed in the ground in the early-to-mid 5th century AD. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/roman-silver-workshops-traprain/traprain-law-treasure-national-museums-scotland/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-23 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Roman silversmiths (multiple workshops, Gaul and the Mediterranean) - **Date:** Individual vessels late 3rd century to mid-5th century AD. The hoard was assembled over decades and concealed in the ground in the early-to-mid 5th century AD. - **Medium:** Silver and silver-gilt vessels and personal objects, most deliberately cut, folded or crushed into hacksilver (bullion fragments), with associated clipped silver siliquae (coins) - **Dimensions:** Total weight approximately 23 kg (51 lb), equivalent to about 71 Roman pounds. 327 individual fragments, representing an estimated 129 to 171 separate vessels and objects. A few pieces survive complete or nearly so; most are fragments. - **Object type:** Silver - **Period:** Late Roman / Late Antique manufacture, deposited in native Iron Age Votadinian Scotland beyond the frontier of Roman Britain - **Current location:** National Museums Scotland, National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh (Early People gallery) - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary In May 1919 an excavation on Traprain Law, an Iron Age hillfort in East Lothian, turned up 23 kilograms of Roman silver plate, most of it deliberately cut, folded and crushed into bullion. It remains the largest hoard of Late Roman hacksilver known anywhere, found not within the Roman Empire but at a native British settlement beyond its formal frontier, the power centre of the Votadini tribe.Alexander Ormiston Curle, who directed the dig, read the damaged silver in 1923 as barbarian loot. A century of subsequent research, most fully set out by Fraser Hunter, Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann and Kenneth Painter, has built a different and better evidenced case: that Roman plate was reduced to bullion inside the Roman world during economic crisis and sent north repeatedly, over generations, as subsidy or payment for military service, accumulating at Traprain Law like a long-running account before its final, unrecovered burial in the early fifth century.An earlier attempt to name the culprits, Irish raiders under Niall of the Nine Hostages, collapsed once modern scholarship redated Niall himself half a century later than the theory required. What survives among the fragments, alongside the classical imagery of Hercules and a sea Nereid, is one of the earliest Christian objects found in Scotland, a small gilt jug carrying scenes from Genesis and Exodus to the Gospels. The treasure remains on display at the National Museum of Scotland, and the question that matters most about it, exactly how and why it crossed from Roman hands to a hillfort beyond the frontier, is still argued rather than settled. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **late 3rd century AD-early-mid 5th century AD** Roman elite owners across Gaul and the Mediterranean world, and within Roman Britain `[documented]` (manufacture and Roman ownership) The vessels in the hoard were made across roughly a century and a half by multiple workshops, primarily placed by style in Gaul and the Mediterranean. Owner graffiti scratched onto at least twenty pieces names individual Roman owners, including Amabilis, Emilius and a woman, Victorina, direct evidence of real personal ownership within the Roman world before any of this silver reached Traprain Law. - **uncertain, within the manufacture period-early-mid 5th century AD** unknown - the mechanism by which the silver passed beyond Roman control `[disputed]` (transfer beyond the frontier) How and why Roman table silver, already partly reduced to bullion, reached a native British hillfort beyond the formal frontier is the central disputed question of this record. Three positions have been argued: Curle's 1923 reading of the hoard as loot taken by barbarian raiders, explicitly linked by him to the Teutonic migrations of the period; a 1924 proposal by William Ridgeway identifying the raiders as Irish forces under Niall of the Nine Hostages around AD 403-405, shown by Kenneth Painter in 2012 to fail on chronological grounds, since Niall is now dated roughly half a century later; and the subsidy/payment-for-service hypothesis, first proposed by Eric Birley and Malcolm Todd (1985) and developed in detail by Fraser Hunter, Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann and Kenneth Painter (2013, 2022), under which the silver was cut into bullion within the Roman world during economic crisis and sent north repeatedly, over decades, as diplomatic payment or reward for military service to the Votadini elite at Traprain Law. - **early-mid 5th century AD** Votadini elite of Traprain Law `[documented]` (deposit and concealment) The physical act of burial, in a pit dug into an occupied house-cluster on the hillfort's western shoulder, is documented by the 1919 excavation itself and dated by the accompanying clipped coins of Valens, Arcadius and Honorius to the closing years of Roman Britain. The motive for concealment, and whether it represents one act or the final act in a series, is not documented. - **early-mid 5th century AD-12 May 1919** no owner - undisturbed in the ground `[unknown]` (gap) No record of any kind survives for roughly one and a half thousand years. Traprain Law was abandoned as a major settlement in the early 5th century, close to the hoard's likely concealment date, and Votadini power is thought to have shifted afterward to Din Eidyn, later Edinburgh; whether that abandonment and the treasure's concealment are connected is not established. - **12 May 1919-1923** Society of Antiquaries of Scotland excavation, directed by Alexander Ormiston Curle, on the estate of A. J. Balfour `[documented]` (discovery and excavation) Found during a systematic excavation the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland had run on Traprain Law since 1914, not by chance civilian discovery. Foreman George Pringle loosened the first vessel with a pick-axe on 12 May 1919. Curle reported the find in The Antiquaries Journal in 1921 and published the full catalogue, The Treasure of Traprain, in February 1923. - **1919-1923-present** National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, now National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh `[documented]` (acquisition and continuous custody) The hoard passed into the national collection Curle himself directed. The National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland's collections transferred to National Museums Scotland on that institution's 1985 formation. The treasure has remained in the national collection continuously since 1919-23, restored in the early 1920s by the Edinburgh silversmiths Brook and Son, and is currently displayed in the Early People gallery of the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. The precise legal mechanism of the original 1919-23 transfer from excavation to national collection was not established from the sources consulted for this record. ## Open questions - Why was Roman table silver, already partly reduced to bullion within the empire, sent north to Traprain Law specifically: as subsidy, as payment for military service, as accumulated diplomatic gift over generations, or some mixture of all three? The current scholarly consensus favours a subsidy/payment model over Curle's original loot theory, but no document names the transaction, and the argument rests on pattern and comparison rather than direct record. - Why was the hoard buried rather than spent, melted or handed on, and why was it never recovered? Traprain Law was abandoned as a major centre at roughly the same period the hoard is thought to have been concealed; whether the two events are connected is not established in the sources consulted. - Who were Amabilis, Emilius and Victorina, the owners named in graffiti scratched onto individual pieces, and how did objects bearing their personal marks end up together in a hoard buried in Scotland? Their relationship to each other and to the hoard's final owners is unknown. - Was the treasure concealed in a single act, or, as the 2022 reassessment's savings-account model suggests, was it drawn down and added to repeatedly over decades before a final, otherwise unremarkable deposit that simply happened never to be reopened? The physical evidence supports gradual accumulation of manufacture dates; it cannot by itself prove how many separate burial and recovery episodes occurred before the final one. - What was the exact legal process by which the 1919 find passed from an excavation on A. J. Balfour's private estate into the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland's collection? This record was unable to confirm the mechanism, whether Scots treasure trove law, a direct agreement with the landowner, or the terms of the Society of Antiquaries' excavation licence, from the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] A. O. Curle, 'The Recent Discovery of Silver at Traprain Law', The Antiquaries Journal, vol. 1, issue 1 (January 1921). - [2] Kenneth Painter, 'The Traprain Law Treasure and Irish Pirates', The Antiquaries Journal, vol. 92 (5 July 2012). - [3] Chris Catling, 'Piecing together the puzzle: understanding the Late Roman hacksilver from the Traprain Hoard', Current Archaeology 393 / The Past (2 November 2022). - [4] National Museums Scotland (Jim Tate and Lore Troalen), 'Investigating the Traprain Law Roman treasure'. - [5] Fraser Hunter, Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann and Kenneth Painter (eds), The Late Roman Silver Treasure from Traprain Law, National Museums Scotland (NMSE Publishing), Edinburgh, 2022. ISBN 9781910682234. - [6] Fraser Hunter and Kenneth Painter (eds), Late Roman Silver: The Traprain Treasure in Context, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2013. ISBN 978 1 908332 02 8. - [7] Review notice, Fraser Hunter, Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann and Kenneth Painter, The Late Roman Silver Treasure from Traprain Law, Scottish Archaeological Journal 45.1 (2023). Full text was not accessible; used only to confirm the review's existence and subject. - [8] East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists' Society, 'The Roman Treasure from Traprain Law' (December 2022), announcing a talk by Dr Fraser Hunter. - [9] History Hit, 'Beyond the Frontier: Unearthing the Secrets of Scotland's Roman Hoard'. - [10] National Museums Scotland blog, 'A century of silver: the Traprain Treasure on its hundredth birthday' (2019); page returned an access error on direct fetch, the X.GVA accession format is drawn from the page's own URL and a search-index snippet rather than a full read of the article. - [11] The History Blog, 'Traprain Law silver dish digitally reconstructed' (February 2013). - [12] Mikhail Treister, review of Fraser Hunter, Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann and Kenneth Painter (eds), The Late Roman Silver Treasure from Traprain Law, Gnomon 97.2 (2025), 396-401. Full text was not accessible; used only to confirm the review's existence. - [13] The Classical Association in Northern Ireland, 'Paid to Behave: The Traprain Law Hoard' (20 May 2018). - [14] Scottish History website, 'The Traprain Treasure: A late Roman silver hoard found in Scotland'. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Traprain Law Treasure'. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with primary NMS catalogue citations. - [16] Journal notice, 'The Traprain Law jug with biblical scenes', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (2025). Full text and author name were not accessible on direct fetch; content drawn from the journal's own listing and a search-index summary. - [17] McTears, 'Tokens of the Traprain Treasure', on Brook and Son's authorised reproductions. - [18] Wikipedia, 'Votadini'. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement. - [19] Wikipedia, 'Alexander Ormiston Curle'. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Society of Antiquaries of Scotland obituary material. - [20] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Trapain Law Treasure, five photographs by user Tyssil, CC BY-SA 4.0, with per-file extmetadata confirming licence and description. - [21] Review notice, 'The late Roman silver treasure from Traprain Law', Archaeological Journal, vol. 181, no. 1 (2024). Full text was not accessible; used only to confirm the review's existence. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.