Casgliadau Arlein

Head with a long neck carved in a simple native style. Both the back and sides of the head are flattened, and the top is lightly and irregularly tooled to suggest hair. The oval face has circular eyes outlined by a deep groove, a long, narrow nose, and a small lipless mouth shown by a shallow horizontal notch. The ears are clearly marked, and take the form of deep indentations with a slight surrounding rim. This stone head may have been a representation of a deity, of a dead person, or of the spirit of a family or clan, that is in Roman terms a Lar familiaris. It has usually been assumed that heads such as the Caerwent example are male, but this need not be the case. Indeed, this head may be of a female, for it certainly bears a resemblance to the face of the seated Mother Goddess found elsewhere in the town, and both pieces were fashioned from a local quartz sandstone rather than the more easily carved Bath stone. The head shows signs of weathering.