Introduction

On 12 May 1919, a workman was digging on the Iron Age hillfort of Traprain Law in East Lothian, some 30km east of Edinburgh in south-east Scotland [p1]. The work had only restarted for a fortnight: excavations had been in abeyance for three years in the turmoil of the Great War, a war in which this man, George Pringle, had himself fought. The routine of excavation was familiar to him; he had been foreman on these excavations in 1914 and 1915. The results had been fascinating and the haul finds impressive, but nothing matched what was to appear that day. In gently loosening the soil he pulled up a Roman silver vessel on the end of his pick. It was the first trace of the Traprain Treasure, some 1500 years after its burial