Using Hibernate to persist a List<Map<String, Object>>

I have the following Java Collection

List<Map<String, Object>>

I've written a custom converter class which can flatten this down to a List of MyEntity (where MyEntity is basically String, Value, Java type, parent collection) and re-assemble it back to a Map but I was wondering......

Is it possible to annotate the List such that Hibernate can persist a List of these Maps? I've had a brief look at the 开发者_运维技巧collectionOfElements annotation and I know there will be problems with the Object value due to Hibernate needed to convert to a valid database type.

Any ideas gratefully received :)