Bucket, wine bucket

Roman wine bucket, discovered by archaeologists during the excavation of a Roman well at Drapers' Gardens, City of London, in 2007. The bucket is decorated with parallel horizontal moulded ribs at the top and bottom. There is a welding line at the top of the lower set of ribs, showing where the top of the vessel was joined to the bottom. There are two rounded lugs on the rim to hold the handle. The handle is decorated with moulded ovolos. There are three trefoil-shaped feet attached to the bottom of the bucket. A similar bucket has been found in a 5th-century grave in Nubia, Africa, so it is possible that this bucket was made in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is a very unusual find for Britain.
The bucket was part of a hoard of 20 high-quality vessels and utensils deposited in a late Roman well. Evidence from coins found with the hoard suggested the vessels were placed there sometime between 375 CE and the early 400s. This was a time when Roman London was falling into decline and slowly being abandoned. The hoard is likely to have been the ritual deposition of a set of tableware, perhaps an offering to the gods to close the well and bring good luck to the people that owned the vessels before they left London to live elsewhere. The ceremony can be guessed at, due to the layers of objects in the well: first some coins were thrown in, then broken pieces of the well's bucket, then a woman deliberately broke her bracelet and dropped it in. On top of that were stacked the vessels, perhaps after a final feast in which they were used, and then part of a carcass of a young deer was added.