 Right, Ella Paul works at the National Museum of Antiquities in Scotland as part of the treasure trove team. And she's going to tell us about in the treasure trove unit she's going to tell us about. I've lost her. Yes, no, there she is. Yes, right. Good. Great. She's going to tell us about treasure trove seals in Scotland look at ceiling ceiling practices. Now, the Scottish treasure trove system, as I expect you all know, is rather different from the English treasure trove system. And in many ways it's actually better. And it's possible that there may be reforms in the next year or two which will bring the English system using more of the definitions of treasure that are used in Scotland. Once that happens, it will possibly have an impact on the study of seals in the future study of English seals, not Scottish seals. But what we're going to hear about now from Ella is the Scottish seal seals and what they tell us about ceiling practices. Right, so over to you, Ella. Thank you, John. That's very kind. I'll just share my screen. Okay. So thank you very much, John. And thank you to the organizers for inviting me to speak today. And we're taking you on. I'm afraid of a whirlwind tour for the next 20, 25 minutes of treasure trove sewer matrix data, what I think it might be able to tell us and where the potential is for future research as well. And where we have an international audience. So I'll lay some of the ground right just to start. This is treasure trove. John gave a nice introduction. It is the legal framework for managing portable antiquities found in Scotland. And it operates on a Scott's common law principle of Bonnevacantia. Bonnevacantia roughly not exactly translates as ownerless goods of which portable antiquities form a subset. It can be quite complex, but essentially, it means that all objects regardless of age, material or object type must be reported to the treasure trove unit and maybe claimed as treasure trove by the crown and allocated to a museum in Scotland, or otherwise disclaimed and returned to the finder. There are no restrictions on what may be claimed. So it could be something of lead, a textile, something of precious metal, a hoard, a single find, chance find excavation, all comes through treasure trove. It's at this point I have to stipulate, as matter of course the treasure act of 1996 not apply to Scotland. It is treasure trove law instead. And the system is managed on a day to day basis by the treasure trove unit and you can see the team just on the right. It's a small team, just three of us, we have remit for the entirety of Scotland, mainland as well as the islands. So Sophie on the right is a US team member who focuses on prehistoric epics. I'm working on seal matrices and Emily on the left, treasure trove manager, has an interest in Roman coins. If you would like more information, we have a new revamped website, so please give us a visit or get in touch with us. One of the object types we record frequently and also claim frequently, and this is the point that John was coming to, is the sometimes but not always humble seal matrix. And because they are regularly claimed and allocated to museums, we have this corpus of seal matrices over the decades that are sitting in Scottish museums around the country, which we can go and access and research. So what's been written now if you listen to Elizabeth News, wonderful talk last week. And Rachel Davis's talk just now. Scottish seals do feature in late 19th and early 20th century catalogs so long water degree birch, a bit like Stevenson and Wood. The focus of these is quite elite. It seals and feel matrices and seal impressions of people and institutions deemed important at the time. In more recent decades, the broader straight questions have been asked predominantly of English material culture. And that's partly in response to the inaccessibility of the Scottish material culture and the Scottish data, specifically the treasure trove data. It was nice for a new relative newcomer to the fields to come across the seals in medieval Wales projects and see some of the questions they were demanding of their data. It's not to say there has been no research on Scottish seals. On the contrary, there's plenty out of there and this is just a small selection. So on the top right, you can see a publication by Virginia Glenn, decorative metal work in the collections of National Museum Scotland. It's the several seal matrices, they're all quite high status. And it approaches from more of an old historical perspective than an archaeological one, for example. Mark Hall, bottom right of Perth Museum and Art Gallery has published on two seal matrices that were allocated to Perth by a treasure trove, so two medieval men of Strathearn. And in the early 90s, David Caldwell published on a particular type of seal matrix of the 16th and early 17th centuries in Scotland. And of course, most recently, you just heard from Dr Rachel Meredith Davis, looking at women seals. But I think it's fair to say there has been no attempt to consider a national picture of sealing practices in late medieval Scotland thus far. And that got us thinking. And by us, I have to extend my thanks to my colleague at National Museum Scotland, Dr Alice Blackwell, who really provided some of the impetus for these very early questions. And we set out initially to do three things. So first was to re-identify all of the seal matrices recorded by the treasure trove unit. Some of these had images, some of them didn't. Some of them had an identification of a legend or a motif, some of them didn't again. So it's really quite a mixed bag. We then started to re-record the data in a high tech Excel spreadsheet. And the benefit of this was to make it a comprehensive dataset all in one place. The treasure trove database incorporates all object types of course. And the benefit of pulling out this data by itself was that we could include object specific fields, such as motif type, owner for classification. This is quite an early example. But you can see the benefits. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, and most long term, we're seeking to reinterpret this as a comprehensive data sets within a Scottish context. So not a regional or a local but a national context. And additionally, eventually in a wider British and Irish context. So what do we have? Well, if you're familiar with the portable antiquity scheme data, you'll realise it's quite a small data set. We've recorded over 120 so far. There are more to be added. The data set currently comprises data from the late 90s to 2019. There are data from the last year that we've not been able to record yet into the pandemic. And there are data predating the late 90s that just need a bit more digging into paper archives, for example. And we think a total we've been looking at 150 or 160. And it is very much tip of the iceberg stuff. And it only includes CMHC is recorded by the treasure trove unit. It does not include everything else. So historic museum acquisitions. So acquisitions that haven't come through treasure trove. And there are various reasons for this excavated examples and we don't have too many. They do come through treasure trove, but I'm only dealing with the chance find so far. Those seals in private collections. And I'm, I'm, I should have explained that stuff I'm using seal interchangeably between seal matrix and seal impression at the moment. And of course the impressions on datable documents, which are crucial for us answering any big chronological questions. In terms of data recording methods, it's been somewhat ad hoc over the last two centuries. The earliest seal matrix we have claimed by the crown is in 1833. It was found in 1832 just the year before in central Edinburgh just off the Royal Mile. It bears the lamb and pen and the Agnes day with a personal legends and it's interesting to note that in the mid 19th century that association between the lamb and the pen and was to the order of St. John of Jerusalem. And I suggest that this is an example that would not have been claimed by the crown in 1833. If they thought it was a seal of a lesser individual, for example, it's one that resides in the National Museums collection. And you can see the reference number at the bottom there. It's one that I've not managed to see yet, but I will hope to once I regain access. I should also thank my colleagues and some one mark who's done a lot of the early research into into the development of treasure trove, especially in the 19th century. We also have a list of claims so claimed items have gone into museums through treasure trove from 1912 to 2010. And our digital records in terms of the database didn't begin until 2010. And that's the form of an access database which is free text so incredibly useful and a much a really good move away from the paper archive. But as free text quite difficult to search and pull out comprehensive data from. And I'm delighted to say that this year we have forthcoming public database which will publish this data will be searchable and accessible, and it will include the CRHC as well. So in terms of preliminary findings, in no particular order, I thought I'd start with women. We have very, very, very few women named in legends of the CRHC is recorded by the treasure trove unit. And that's that's three in total. So I can talk you through them now. The first is one that I will come back to. It's a vesica seal matrix copper alloy. It's the seal of Isabella Disturling. And the motif is one I'll come back to as well. It's the martyrdom of St Catherine of Alexandria. And I will discuss that in more detail. It's similar in form and material copper alloy vesica is a seal of Agnes Defenton and the motif here is a is more standard. It's a pelican in her piety. And we have just one more, which is all together later in date. And it is the seal of Margaret we've lost the second part of the legends. The motif is a shield. It appears to be blank. It's unclear whether this was unfinished and discarded or or the decoration wasn't required for whatever reason, and then destroyed afterwards. It's also unclear whether the matrix was bent and then straightened out after it was recovered. In terms of legends type of those matrices with legible legends, which is about half of the data sets, but I expect this to improve as we improve accessibility to the data. But overwhelmingly, we have personal legends. So legends naming an individual 84%. We have very, very few anonymous legends at all. It's just 18 total. And this is all of them. We have one that appears twice to the seven in total, one in French one in English and then the rest in Latin to invocations of Jesus and three more standard anonymous legends at the top. And we also have to within the data set that have institutional legends, and I'll discuss just one of them here. And it's interesting to follow the three castle example that Dr. Davis just mentioned. This is at least appears to be one half of a cockpit seal for use in a process the Royal half. The legend mentioned as James the sixth by the grace of God, King of Scots, and the Royal shield is in the center there. It's unusual. First of all, it is a bit messy. The legend doesn't quite complete the circumference of the dye face. One of the perforations and the looks is slightly off center and there are tooling marks as well on the looks and on the reverse of the dye as well. And the initial thought was that perhaps this was a forgery but actually on closer inspection. It seems that this is unlikely. And the main reason for that is that it's entirely unconvincing. The central motif isn't particularly well drawn. But most importantly, the material type is entirely inappropriate for use in a press you want something like a copper ally or bronze or brass. And led is very hard standards like kind of scrutiny. And when you look at the looks in closer detail actually there's very little sign of them being used in a press in that way. And so the discussion that I had with Dr as blackwell and David called well, formerly National Museum Scotland was that perhaps here we're looking at trial piece or a test piece and cheap, easily engraved metal. But it's one still up for discussion. In terms of dating, we have. It was quite reassuring last week to hear Laura Burnett mentioned the 15th century gap. There's a problem in our data set. There's come about for one of two reasons. First is the way we've recorded data in the past, and I'm talking back decades and decades. See all matrices in the treasure trove data set are either recorded as 13th 14th century or 16th 17th century. There's no 15th century in our data. And it turns out by the fact that we don't know what we're looking for. And it might be something that is, is solvable when we compare it to datable materials to seal impressions attached to documents. But there is a problem of data bias there of course, the treasure trade data more readily offers seals of people of middling to lower status, the archival material is the other way. There's a problem that we've had historically recording this data and also that we don't know what we're looking for. We have a few candidates, but it's, it's quite difficult to say anything more about it at the moment. We do on occasion have identifiable individuals who are closely datable. And this is a really good example. This is the seal of William de Lamberton who is Bishop of St Andrews from the 1290s or 1320s. We don't have an impression of this particular seal surviving, but we do have an impression of a much larger seal matrix, which is very, very similar in design and the use of the heraldic arms as well. So we're happy with the association and we're happy with the date as well, but these are few and far between. And actually to answer broad chronological questions as I said we need that datable material as well. So that's a much bigger project. We have a lot of material choice for seal matrices. This is a bit of a crude graph, but I think it displays what it needs to. We have a strong predominance for copper alloy in the 13th and 14th centuries. We have very, very few lead seals. That was something that really shot kind of shouted out to me when I was comparing it to the data in England and Wales, their seal matrix data that actually there are a lot of lead alloy seals. And we have two or three, but we see this complete shift into the 16th and 17th centuries and we see this predominance instead of lead alloy. And one of the reasons for that is that we start to see a very particular type of Scottish seal matrix being used at that time. And that is this one. We're calling it the flower type for an obvious reason. The stalk handle on the reverse is like the stalk for flower, and then it splays out onto the reverse of the dye into petal formations. They are molded sometimes, sometimes they're engraved. The dye face is always circular. The motif is almost always a shield with a round bottom. The legend is almost always a personal legend in black letter or Latin capital script. David Caldwell has published on these. The initial data set I think was only seven or eight. We have more to add now. And some of the compositional analysis that he undertook as part of that paper was to suggest that actually these are alloyed with tin presumably to harden them for making impressions. This example identifies Thomas Gray, and the Heraldry suggests a link to the graves of Heaton in Northumberland. We also have a particularly nice example which was published last year, and wonderfully it came up in an excavated context at Dunnevegg Castle on Islay. It is the seal of Sir John Campbell of Cordeaux and seems to relate to the siege of the castle in the early 17th century. In England, we have so few of these. I don't think you can see my mouse. On the reverse, you have a date in the petals, so 1593. And we also have a makers mark as well, which seems to be linked to David Milne at Goldsmith. That is published. It's in the conference pack, the link, and it's on display at the Museum of Islay life currently, while it's the post excavation work is being finished and it's declared treasure trove. So out of all of this, this kind of broad synthesis of the treasure trove data came a smaller case study based on the principle that because we have so many legends that identify individuals of our data sets. But there's real potential there to have discussions about personal identity motif choices, especially when you have a personal legend in combination with a non-standard motif. And in 2019, the seal matrix on the screen in front of you was reported to us. And it's the one you saw earlier of Isabella Disturling, and the central motif is not a generic representation of St Catherine, but instead very specifically her martyrdom for the very end of her life. And there were lots of studies of late medieval engagement with St Catherine. And it just sparked my interest. But most of these studies are heavily anglicentric. And this is because they draw almost always on hagiographical literature, which is almost always written in Middle English. There is no in-depth study of the course of St Catherine in late medieval Scotland, as far as I'm aware. I think partly this is partly owing to the fact that there is so little literature in terms of St's lives written in vernacular Scots at the time. And these studies are often at the exclusion of material culture. And this is why I think there's real potential. And I thought to identify the types of individuals who are putting this particular motif, so St Catherine of Alexandria, on their seal matrices in late medieval Scotland, and further assess how standard the iconography of this example was compared to others. And I have to thank John McEwen for this. He sent over an awful lot of data from the DigiSig Archive, which I compared and contrasted in terms of visual elements, so whether there was a woman, a sword, a wheel, a crown, et cetera, et cetera. Basically all you need is a wheel with some spikes. That seems to be the basic enough association, or certainly the association that I and antiquarians were also making as well. Sometimes you have a woman with the wheel. That's quite common. The woman may have a crown, may have a sword, may have a book, but less frequently. Sometimes you see a woman with a wheel and also a kneeling figure as you've got in the painting on the right. But this one seems quite special. It seems quite detailed and it seems to show really intimate knowledge of the martyrdom, a particular part of the tale. And if you can see my mouse, you've got the kneeling figure in the center. Arms raised. You receive a crown just here, which is being handed to her by an angelic figure or a heavenly body. The heavenly theme is cemented with the two stars here as well. And then either side of the female body, you have two wheels with very, very clear spikes or blades curving out of the woodwork, which is the machine upon which St Catherine's condemned to die before the miraculously broke and she was eventually beheaded by a sword which is looming rather ominously behind her head here. This is busier and more detailed than any other example I can find in Britain. It goes beyond the representation. It's very specific. It's at the point of her life, which is her most palpable point. It's the martyrdom. It's the point at which she extinguishes her life. And it's interesting to think about the legend and how it relates to this motif and of course it's speculative. But in terms of what might appeal to someone called Isabella Stirling, who appears to be quite high status, not just in terms of the top name, but also in the fantastic execution, pun not intended, of the central motif here. And if we look at the crown being handed by the heavenly body, now this could have a twofold meaning we see in the hagiographical literature. The Catherine is very frequently described as of royal descent, so she's a princess or a queen of Alexandria. And you can imagine this secular authority must appeal to someone of relatively high status, but also the crown of martyrdom we're in an intensely religious setting here. And that duality of meaning may have appealed both ways to the use of this matrix. We do have two other seals, rather simpler. The first on the left is a seal matrix of a gentleman called William. We haven't quite made out a surname or by name yet. The motif is quite interesting. You see the Catherine wheel as a pseudo heraldic device on the shields with the pen and cross extending up into the legends. This is something that we see quite often on merchant seals, or people of that emerging business, middle and class in the 14th century. And on the right, we have the simplest of the three. It's lead, it's cheap, it's very, very small. We have just the wheel by itself with the spikes emanating from it. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to make out the legends. It might be anonymous, but it's really hard to tell it's another one that we'd like to see closer. Once things ease up in terms of the pandemic. In terms of dating, the DigiSig data showed a real preference for this emergence of St Catherine motifs from the 1340s right through to the end of the century and it drops off quite severely. This is backed up by the portable antiquities scheme data in that of the 19 examples they have, only one names an individual. The others are all anonymous, which lends weight to that 14th century interpretation. There's no reason why it shouldn't be the same for Scottish data. Of course, we don't have as good a backing to make the chronological claims. But what we do see is this long increased longevity of personal legends on CR matrices. And that carries through not just to the 14th century, but we see it reemerging or continuing to emerge depending on what happens in the 15th. On that flower type CR matrix in the 16th and early 17th century. And it's particularly of notes in a period where legend use is falling out of fashion as seals develop south of the border. And I think what I provided this afternoon, hopefully is an overview of the kind of data we have very broad as much as I can cram in as possible. There are very much pinch of salt conclusions, it is a very much tip of the iceberg data set, and you have to be cautious extrapolating from those kinds of that kind of size data set. There's not enough here to suggest that there is real potential for future research in terms of the fact that we don't have many women at all. We don't have many less seals in the 13th and 14th century data. The suggestion that we have both the fact that we have an entirely Scottish type of seal matrix, which is really, really kind of in use with a vengeance in the 16th and early 17th centuries. There's not enough here to suggest that there's some exciting research still to be done. And I think there's enough to confirm that we should continue to be cautious of applying what we know as sealing practices south of the Anglia Scottish border and elsewhere in Britain and Ireland to the nation north of it. So I think I'll probably stop there. Thank you very much and I'm very happy to take any questions. Thank you very much, Ella, that was marvellous, marvellously to time. Lots of information there. Lots of wise conclusions, I thought. Absolutely. There is a question from Laura Burnett and Rob Webly. Can we ask are the figures on personal V anonymous based on those claimed or all those which go through the process. And that's a really good question. Historically just claims we don't have fantastic records for objects that were maybe seen in the mid 20th century but not claimed. And from 2010 onwards it's all CMHC's whether they are claimed or not. That's that's clear because it's it seemed that there were very few anonymous, as opposed to personal in my sort of general impression of seals that are not anonymous seals while they occur north of the border aren't really very as common as they are in other areas of England. Yes, that was something we'd heard. And we're kind of acting on as a as a basis. So it was interesting to see that she the data stands up to that we have very few of them. Now, let's sing someone says could the shield with the single wheel be for someone called Turner. Yes, possibly. The one with the shield to the single wheel. Yes, so the, the by name of that particular example is William and then we have RL so a RL EL. The first letter is very confusing so I'd be happy to take opinions on it. I do occasionally have CMHC's with puns. As we see plenty of south of the border as well. So yes, I think the distinction that I have been working on and I think is a fair distinction is that if it's a wheel that has got clearly clearly got spikes or blades coming out of it I think that's a very particular type of wheel and I think the association is immediate to St Catherine. But I'm happy to have those conversations. Right. Now, Rachel Hart asked do you have any plans to search archival collections to find impressions made with your matrices. Could your new web resource be used to bring such impressions together with their matrices. So there is a wonderful web resource called people of medieval Scotland which digitizes archival data, including some seal impressions, which is my go to at the moment. If I'm trying to find an individual. There are no big plans at the moment. Mostly owing to we've not had discussions about funding yet. This is very much the beginning of the research it's very much kind of simplifying the data and just trying to get it out there to start with by think long term it's an excellent idea. Well, I wish we had a people of medieval England and database we could just go to it would be absolutely marvelous but thank you very much for your talk it was excellent the there are one or two other questions but I won't deal with them you can deal with them. You're yourself.