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Description: | Copper alloy fragment of a Roman trumpet brooch. This fragment is the ‘trumpet head’ of the brooch. It is hollow, conical in shape with a backward bend, subtriangular in plan front and back and subcircular in section. It is 26.56mm in length, 14.42mm wide at the mouth of the cone and tapers to its narrowest width of 6.18mm. At the centre of the rear of the head is a vertical loop which would have held the spring, which is now missing, and the head is hollow to accommodate the forward coils of the spring.
A loop placed perpendicular to the vertical loop would have been positioned at the top of the mouth of the ‘trumpet’ to take a swivel chain, now missing, but this is has broken off in antiquity. The rear side of the brooch is plain, but the front has moulded decoration. There is a moulded rim around the top of the front of the trumpet, a triple band around the front of the narrowest part of the fragment and in between a design of opposing crescents either side of a central rib. There are smaller opposing triangles at the top and bottom of the rib, and a raised moulding that follows the triangular plan of the brooch surrounds the entire design. Blue enamel survives almost intact in one of the crescents, with the opposing crescent having only a trace of the same blue enamel. There are no further traces of enamel in the opposing triangles or elsewhere on the brooch. The design is Romanised but with a Celtic influence. It is suggested that it is reminiscent of a bull’s head. This pattern is the most common type found, though, over all, enamelled trumpet brooches are in the minority. The patina is light green, with traces of brown on the back of the fragment. The lower end of the brooch would have consisted of a straight leg with a moulded foot knob with a catchplate extending up most of the length of the leg. Usually there would have been an ‘acanthus’ moulding between the head and the leg, but this has been lost in antiquity along with the entirety of the leg and catchplate. A close parallel can be found in Hattatt 1985, Iron Age and Roman Brooches, Oxford: Oxbow Books, page 106, number 432 and 433. Trumpet brooches are found from East Lothian to the south of England. They date from the mid 1st century AD and lasted until the late 2nd century AD. | Subjects: | Trumpet | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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