Roman Phallic Brooch

Staying lucky in Pontes, Roman Staines – a phallic brooch. Phallic good luck charms are found as finger rings, pendants, wind chimes, lamps, belt buckles and in jewellery such as this brooch. They were intended to ward off the ‘evil eye’, and the sacred image of the phallus was also one of the tokens of the safety of the state. Our brooch was found in the early Roman occupation layer at the Barclays Bank site. Phallic good luck charms were particularly popular with the military, so it seems likely this one was lost by a soldier soon after the Roman occupation. Whether loss of the brooch changed his luck we will never know. This is our first effort at this tricky object, but we forgot to sequence a series of shots to define the holes, damn! We will try again. Our brooch is made from bone and is oval with axes of 42 and 37mm and a thickness (including the phallus) of 10mm.