La Jornada: Cup from Hadrian’s Wall with inscriptions from eastern forts found

Merida. A team from the Institute of Archeology of Mérida (CSIC and Junta de Extremadura), the National Archaeological Museum and the Institute of History (CSIC) published in the magazine Britannia the study and characterization of what they have named the Berlanga cup, an exceptional Roman cup found by chance in the town of Berlanga del Duero (Soria).

The piece, made in the 2nd century in Britain (now the United Kingdom), is the only one of the five known Hadrian’s Wall cups – a rare series of enameled vessels linked to this border – that features inscriptions from the wall’s eastern forts.

The research team interprets the cup as a souvenir brought to the peninsula by a Celtiberian soldier after serving on the most remote frontier of the Roman Empire. Although most of the cups in this series from Hadrian’s Wall have been found in British territory, the Berlanga cup is the second of these pieces found on the peninsula – after the discovery, in the 19th century, of a fragment that is currently preserved in London – and it will be the only one that will be exhibited in Spain.

Specifically, the cup can be visited at the Numantino Museum in Soria, where it is undergoing restoration work before being exposed to the public, the CSIC reported in a press release.

Furthermore, the archaeological survey carried out in the area where the cup was found has revealed the existence of a small group of buildings, remains of a Roman villa active between the 1st and 4th centuries.

The work – which combined surface prospecting, ground-penetrating radar and historical aerial photographs – was carried out in the area known as La Cerrada del Arroyo, just 100 meters from the center of Berlanga del Duero. The campaign will continue in 2026.

Border memory

The cup appeared fragmented, deformed and incomplete, but it preserves around 80 or 90 percent of the object, which has allowed it to be virtually reconstructed.

It is a hemispherical bronze bowl with enameled decoration in red, green, turquoise and blue and whose decoration represents Hadrian’s Wall through a frieze dotted with turrets.

This motif connects it with a very rare series of enameled vessels linked to Hadrian’s Wall, of which only four other examples are known in the entire world (in addition to two fragments).

“The quality of craftsmanship and the materials used in these cups tell us that they were prestigious objects, most likely made to order to give or decorate the military elite who had served on Hadrian’s Wall, the furthest border of the empire,” explained Jesús García Sánchez, researcher at the Institute of Archeology of Mérida.

“In fact, most researchers agree in interpreting them as a souvenir or memory of the wall,” he added.

According to this idea, the Berlanga cup would have traveled from Britain with its owner, a former soldier who returned to his place of origin: Celtiberia, a region that covered a large part of the current province of Soria, as well as areas of La Rioja, Zaragoza, Guadalajara, Teruel, and Cuenca.

“We know that the Romans incorporated troops from recently conquered territories into their army and that a Celtiberian unit, the Cohors I Celtiberorum, served on Hadrian’s Wall,” says the researcher.

Hadrian’s Wall is one of the best-known borders of the Roman world, a 117-kilometer wall that connected the current English cities of Carlisle and Newcastle.

Built and fortified by Emperor Hadrian between the years 122 and 128, it protected the Roman province of Britain from the raids of the Picts, an indigenous people in the north of the British Isles.

“The cup is exceptional not only because it is one of the best preserved, but because it is the only one that has inscriptions relating to the military camps in the eastern part of the wall: Cilurnum, Onno, Vindobala and Condercum,” highlighted Susana de Luis Mariño, from the National Archaeological Museum.

Another curiosity about this cup is that the arrangement of the names suggests that the list is read from west to east, as if the cup represented the wall “seen from within,” in the words of the researchers.

The first of these wall cups was found three centuries ago, in 1725, in a small town in England. Since then, two other cups have been located in England and one in France, as well as two fragments.

To confirm the origin and date of manufacture of the cup, the team performed an analysis of its composition using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and isotope analysis.

The results reveal that the cup is made of a quaternary alloy (that is, a mixture of bronze with zinc and lead) and that the material used comes from the Roman mines in northern Britain.

“This analysis has allowed us to demonstrate the authenticity of the piece and determine that the mines from which the metal used came were probably those of Wales or Durham,” said Ignacio Montero Ruiz, from the CSIC Institute of History.

Furthermore, by combining the technical analyzes with the historiographic evidence about the camps reflected in it, the research team has been able to date the piece quite precisely: between the years 124 and 150.