• Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD
• Material: Sandstone
• Site: Chesters Fort

Here Juno Regina, one of the Capitoline Triad – the three deities who shared a temple on the Capitoline Hill in Rome – is standing on a heifer (a female cow). She is dressed in a long-sleeved tunic, mantle and apron, with a toothed necklace around her neck. The standard of craftsmanship is unusually high for work carved in the province of Britannia, and there have been suggestions that the statue was the work of an eastern sculptor based on Hadrian’s Wall.

This statue is thought to be the companion to a statue of Jupiter Dolichenus standing on a bull, trampling a serpent, of which only the serpent and the hooves of the bull remain.

• Date: AD 120s
• Material: Sandstone
• Place found: Built into the wall between Chesters and Carrawburgh, close to Chesters

This building stone is one of 53 centurial stones in the Clayton Collection. These stones give us the names of centurions who, with their men, built Hadrian’s Wall. Each group would have been given a set length of wall to build, and they often inscribed a stone when they had finished.

The inscription reads COH[ORTIS] VI / [CENTURIA] LOUSI / SUAVIS, which translates as ‘From the sixth cohort the century of Lousius Suavis (built this)’. The centurion Lousius Suavis liked to mark his work – five other centurial stones from Hadrian’s Wall feature his name.

• Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD
• Material: Copper alloy
• Place found: Chesters Fort, barrack blocks in the north-east of the fort

This copper-alloy harness mount is inlaid with millefiori glass. Millefiori means ‘thousand-flower’ in Italian, and the patterns are created by fusing many rods of glass together, stretching them, and then cutting the multi-coloured rod into slices.

Horses’ harnesses would have been decorated with studs and mounts to make them seem even more impressive. They would have glinted in the sunlight and jangled as the horses moved. Cavalrymen could personalise the designs and styles for their horses.

• Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD
• Material: Copper alloy
• Place found: Chesters, either the south wall or one of the four interval towers

Known affectionately as the ‘Chesters Scottie dog’, this small figurine is extremely lifelike and shows that some dog breeds (in this case the Scottish Terrier) have changed little in the last 2,000 years.

The Romans kept dogs for hunting, chasing pests and vermin out from beneath granaries, and other jobs, but dogs could be kept as treasured pets too.

• Date: Made AD 90–91 but used for much longer
• Material: Copper alloy
• Place found: Carvoran Fort, a few yards north of the north-west corner of the fort

This modius is an extremely rare find – grain measures are depicted on coins but almost none survive as objects. The inscription on the outside dates it to the reign of the emperor Domitian and says it holds 17½ sextarii. It can in fact hold 20.8 sextarii, however, so if it was used to measure tax paid in grain, the tax payers were being swindled!

Domitian’s name has been scratched out, a practice linked with the phenomenon of damnatio memoriae – where the memory of someone was damned, and wiped from all official records.

• Date: 3rd century AD
• Material: Sandstone
• Place found: Vindolanda Roman Fort, commandant’s house

This altar is a prime example of Roman religious ‘hedging of bets’. Quintus Petronius Urbicus chose to dedicate it not just to Jupiter, the king of all gods, but also to a catch-all ‘other deities’, as well as the god of his house (the praetorium).

One side of the altar is carved with a crane and a chick, while the other has a crane and its prey. The meaning of these images is not known.

• Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD
• Material: Sandstone
• Site: Chesters Fort

On the top (capital) of this altar is a round depression, a focus where offerings could be placed. A frog or toad with outstretched legs is carved on the front of the shaft. The meaning of the amphibian is uncertain, but they were sometimes associated with nymphs and fountains, so it has been suggested that the altar was a dedication to an aquatic deity.

• Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD
• Material: Silver and copper alloy
• Place found: Chesters, barracks in the north-east of the fort

The letters on this belt mount read VTER, and it was probably part of a pair which together bore the phrase VTER FELIX, meaning ‘use with good luck’. This motto was not uncommon in the Roman world, being found on items such as pots, glass vessels and personal possessions including items of adornment.

Soldiers decorated their belts with mounts and studs of a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. This example, which is made from copper alloy plated with silver, would have been an expensive purchase.

• Date: 3rd to 4th century AD
• Material: Copper alloy, iron
• Site: Chesters Fort

This handle for a folding knife has openwork decoration depicting a dog chasing a hare. The dog’s tail abuts a grooved collar, and an iron pin survives which would have allowed the blade to swivel. The ground under the animals houses the slot into which the iron blade folded.

This motif is common in Roman Britain, where about 150 examples of knives of this form are known. A smaller number have been found in other parts of the western Roman Empire.

• Date: 4th century AD
• Material: Jet
• Site: Chesters Fort

Christian symbols and words are engraved on the surface of this ring. The inscription reads QVIS SEPA MEVM ET TVVM DVRANTE VITA, which translates as ‘who shall separate mine and thine while life lasts?’. On the bezel is a backwards (or retrograde) chi-rho, the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ.

This is an important piece of evidence for the presence of Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall.

• Date: Late 3rd to 4th century AD
• Material: Ceramic, black burnished ware
• Site: Chesters Fort

This is a sherd from the rim of a bowl. It has a graffito incised in Greek letters on the outside, […]EΠωM[…]. Unfortunately the start and end of the word are missing, but it is likely to have been a personal name. The soldiers would all have had similar bowls, so marking your name on one ensured that it didn’t get lost.

Although the lettering is Greek, the name is possibly of Celtic origin. This combination shows the melting pot of languages and cultures present on Hadrian’s Wall.

• Material: Shell
• Site: Indo-Pacific region

John Clayton’s grandmother Bridget Atkinson was a keen collector of shells and coins. A letter dated 1776 from George Dixon, an armourer on Captain Cook’s third voyage, suggests he was looking for shells for her collection.

Clayton inherited his grandmother’s collection via his aunt, and this shell is perhaps the most impressive piece.