Details

COLEM:2000.1.18

Colchester Collections

figurine, bear figurine

Roman jet bear figurine standing on a small platform, the right and left forelegs and hind legs positioned so as to form a thread hole. The bear is carved as if walking, with its head swinging to the right. It is incredibly small measuring 14 mm in length. The figurine, as well as another of comparable size and design, forms part of a burial group excavated in 2001 in Abbey Field, the southern cemetery area of Roman Colchester. The burial was of a child, contained in a nailed wooden box. The burial included a colour-coat beaker, two coins, and a collection of jewellery costing of necklaces, bracelets and beads. One of these was a necklace of interlocking jet beads, which can be paralleled to examples found in York and Chelmsford. The burial group dates to the late-third to late-fourth century AD. Several jet bear figurines are known from Roman Britain: four from Colchester (from three separate burials), two from York and one from Malton. They have been published by Roman artefact specialist Nina Crummy in the journal Britannia: ‘Bears and Coins: The Iconography of Protection in the Late Roman Infant Burials’. Crummy argues there is a correlation between these bear figurines being deposited in children’s inhumation burials with other objects that symbolise chthonic protection. Jet was a material believed by the Romans to have magical properties. It was apotropaic, which meant that it was able to distract and ward off the Evil Eye, the gaze of which was believed to be the source of bad luck and malign influence. Jet is a material that obtains an electric charge when rubbed. This physical reaction may have been one of the reasons the Romans believed it to have supernatural or magical power. Some of the jet bears are pierced and may have been worn as bracelets or necklaces, strung with other magical or amuletic objects, known as crepundia. Some of the bears also show signs of wear, through being worn or perhaps being rubbed in order to ‘activate the magic’ of the object. These bear figurines, as funerary artefacts, can be interpreted as protective guardians for the dead. This draws on the Roman symbolism and association of the bear as a mother-goddess and protector of children.The object has been identified as part of the LGBT+ collections as it depicts a bear. Within the gay community there are several subgroups, by which some gay men categorise themselves based on physical appearance. Bears are large hairy men and are so distinctive they have their own flag, formed of stripes of different shades of brown, white, grey and black with a bear paw print.

Roman

stone, jet

width: 15.00 mm
height: 10.00 mm