BROOCH 49577

Description: The fragment forms part of the foot-plate of an Anglo-Saxon miniature square-headed brooch. The terminal is broken off and the opposite end rises slightly to an old break across the end of the bow of the brooch. On the back is the projecting stub of a pin-catch. In the centre of the plate is a plain, flat lozenge enclosed by a narrow rib, and the whole is bordered by a raised flat frame decorated with small nielloed triangles; there is a plain lobe at either side. In the angle between each of these lobes and the end of the bow is a stylised animal motif in Salin's Style I consisting of its head, represented mainly by an eye, and a single, S-shaped limb. This type of brooch occurs mainly in Kent, the Isle of Wight and Saxon-settled areas in northern France; they were generally worn in pairs and can be dated to about AD 530/40 - 560/70 (K Parfitt and B Brugmann, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery on Mill Hill, Deal, Kent, The Society for Medieval Archaeology, monograph series, no. 14 (1997), pp. 37-9; 98, fig. 23). Finer examples have a garnet setting in place of the plain central lozenge, e.g. a series in the British Museum said to be from Herpes, France, although the provenance must be regarded as somewhat uncertain (D Kidd and B Ager, `Herpes, commune de Courbillac (Charente). Collections du British Museum, Londres', in J-Y Marin (ed.), Les Barbares et la Mer (Caen, 1992), pp. 83-96, figs. 1-5). The fragment from Breamore is probably from an Anglo-Saxon grave destroyed by ploughing, as other 6th-century artefacts found nearby and the breaks suggest. Height: 25mm; width: 21mm; weight: 5.6g. X-ray fluorescence analysis conducted at the British Museum indicated an approximate silver content of 88 per cent.

Date: 530 - 560

Object type: BROOCH

Last import: August 15, 2017