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Description: | The object is a Colchester Two-Piece brooch of Polden Hill type. The brooch is made from cast copper alloy and is complete.
In plan, the brooch has long cylindrical wings with caps on each end. The wing caps are circular in shape and are concave. Both wing caps have a single perforation slightly off centre, through which the ends of a copper alloy axis bar can be seen. The axis bar supports a copper alloy spring, of which eleven complete turns remain. The pin is complete and is still attached to the brooch, it has however, broken off the spring. In plan the wings are decorated with 16 longitudinal grooves, creating 14 ribs in total. The ridges look remarkably similar to the turns of a spring. It is possible that the decoration was purposefully chosen so as to replicate the design of a spring. The ribs flanking the bow head are knurled as is every second rib after that, although on some ribs the decoration is very indistinct.
The bow head is humped and does not have appendages. In the centre of the hump, at the junction of the wings is a single perforated lug which secures an external chord. The lug extends forwards over the bow head to form a short median crest. A single traverse groove runs across the crest. The crest is flanked on either side by short longitudinal grooves which decorate the top of the bow head only. The brooch has a narrow, tapering and undecorated bow, which is sub-circular in cross-section. In profile the bow is one continuous curve. The brooch has a deep, triangular catchplate, with no step from the bow, which is 31.8mm long and 19.3mm wide. The catchplate has four perforations laid out roughly in four rows with two at the top, one in the centre and one at the base. The top row consists of two sub-rectangular perforations, one small and one large. The upper edge of the larger shape is obliquely angled so as to imitate the same angle as the upper edge of the catchplate. The bottom right-hand corner of the smaller rectangle is stepped. This is mirrored in the larger shape where the bottom left-hand corner is stepped. The step is due to a sub-rectangular cleft which has been removed from the upper edge of the central perforation. The central perforation is sub-trapezoid shaped. Directly opposite the cleft, but on the opposing lower edge, the central perforation is stepped. This step is due to a sub-rectangular cleft being removed from the upper edge of the sub-triangular (inverted) perforation below. The brooch has a folded pin rest. Looking at the reverse of the brooch in plan, one can see that the pin rest is decorated by two grooves placed at alternate angles to one another. The groove near the base of the pin rest is only partially visible due to abrasion.
The brooch is mid green in colour and is slightly abraded along the catchplate edge and along the front of the bow. The top of the brooch is slightly bent as the wings are at an angle as opposed to being horizontal. Otherwise the brooch is in a fair condition. The width of the brooch across the wings is 33.6mm; the length from the wings to the foot is 74.3mm. The thickness of the head is 15.9mm and its weight is 22.23g.
Polden Hill brooches are Roman and date to around 50-75 AD. The perforations in the catchplate suggest that the recorded object is possibly an early example (see notes). As yet no parallels can be found for the recorded object. However, both Crummy (Crummy N. 1983. Colchester Archaeological Report 2: The Roman small finds from excavations in Colchester 1971-85. Colchester Archaeological Trust: Colchester, fig.6; no.38) and Hattatt (Hattatt, R 1985. Iron Age and Roman Brooches. Oxbow: Oxford, fig.11; no.251), contain examples of earlier Colchester One-Piece brooches which have the similar, vertical groove decoration across the wings and the plain bow. Hattatt??s example dates to 27-75 AD (p. 26). It is therefore possible that the decoration of the recorded object represents a continuation of an earlier Colchester brooch style. | Subjects: | Colchester Two-Piece Polden Hill | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Housley, Sarah - Portable Antiquities Scheme | Identifier: | http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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