Leaving Port Talbot, I headed to the "Pittsburgh of Wales," Newport. People are really enjoying telling me what American equivalent I'm headed to next. Again, I disagree, although I have never been to Pittsburgh either. Newport reminds me of want-to-be Boston in a lot of ways. It has a nice stretch along the River Usk that they are trying to develop into a center of arts and culture, but the process seems to be going slow. There is a lot of construction and renovation happening around the city. So the city really seems like a work in progress.
Traveling so much has made me lose sense of time. I rarely know what day of the week it is, which almost became a major problem. I was planning on heading to the Newport Museum, the point of my visit, tomorrow. As I was walking to my hotel, I had a vague memory that today was Saturday and that most museums are closed on Sundays (you know, like most things). So I thought to check the times on the museum, and turns out it is closed on Sundays. It would have been horrible to miss another museum.
So I headed out towards the museum (and managed to get lost in the midst of the construction). Once I found the museum, I was surprised to find a trove of Roman artifacts. The museum contains many pieces from the excavations in Caerleon and Caerwent, two sites outside Cardiff that I will be seeing in the next few days. The prehistoric and Roman room was well divided into different cases, such as ones dedicated to the region in the Iron Age and the Bronze Age. Once it became more focused on the Roman occupation, the cases focused on Roman religion, domestic life, jewelry, the army, etc. Here are just a few selections of the many interesting things from the museum.
This dish is from what is known as Caerleon ware. The ware was produced in the Caerleon area and shows influence from other Roman pottery, such as the famous Samian ware. Some of the pieces were even meant to imitate the Samian ware from Gaul, suggesting that the citizens of Caerleon wanted a cheaper, easier to get alternative to importing more pottery.
There was also another style of local pottery, presumably more of a common, everyday pottery. It was grey, rather than the preferred red tones found in Samian or Caerleon ware.
Another wonderful piece of the collection was a Roman glass urn with human remains still inside. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, cremation was the main mode of Roman burial. This changed later (and varied around the Empire), leading to many beautiful sarcophagi, but it is very cool to see the remains of a Roman, around 2,000 years later. Or maybe I just find that cool...
The museum also had a beautiful collection of jewelry and clothing items, like this penannular brooch. These brooches are a great example of Roman and Celtic fashions coming together. They became particular popular in Roman Britain during the 3rd and 4th centuries, often adding images of animals to the brooches (not quite visible in this photo).
There were also some lovely fragments of frescoes discovered in Caerleon. Most, like this depiction of a male figure, were done sometime in the 4th century, but there is evidence that there were earlier frescoes in some places that had been plastered over.
There is a great deal of evidence in this museum of the mixing of native British and Roman cultures. Here is a depiction of a Celtic mother goddess found in a Roman home in Caerwent. She seems to have been worshipped as a fertility goddess. Other similar Celtic depictions included a male statue and an antefix tile with the depiction of a Celtic feline goddess (although this is not entirely certain).
A final, special gem was this Roman tile with a paw print in it. It is very fun to imagine the ancient craftsmen making this tile and then watching a favorite dog run across it, ruining the tile. It's wonderful when little bits like this survive in history!
After seeing the museum, I went a walk along the River Usk. Below you can see the Riverfront Center, which houses a gallery and a performance space, and a pedestrian footbridge. There is a nice walk running along the river itself.
My hotel, along with a many residential neighborhoods of Newport, lay across the River Usk.
A detail of the pedestrian footbridge.
Fun Fact #15: So this fact may not be quite a fact. Like most museum displays, sources aren't cited, but the Newport Museum had a display titled "What money was worth at Caerwent in AD 122?" I'm not quite sure where this information was derived, but here's what things cost in Caerwent 1,893 years ago!
Annual pay of a Roman legionary: 300 denarii
Half liter of wine: 1 as
Cloak: 5 denarii and 2 asses
Slave boy: 600 denarii
Loaf of bread: 2 asses
(Roman currency is confusing and variable, so for simplicity sake, at this time an as would have been worth 1/16th of a denarius)
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