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Description: | A worn and incomplete cast copper-alloy artefact: probably a late early-medieval four-way harness link. The object is cruciform, with four arms terminating in (broken) loops emanting from a pronounced central boss. The boss is hollow, 20.5mm in height, c. 3mm thick and c. 22.3mm in diameter. It is decorated with five dots: one on its summit and four others on the side in line with the arms. Around these punched dots are a number of concentric circles, the outermost of which for a given dot meets with other outer circles. These circles are most clearly seen on the lower half of the boss as its uppermost areas have been relatively heavily worn. It is unclear, therefore, whether the fifth dot on the summit would have been surrounded by similar circular patterning. On some of the faces a pair of parallel lines can be seen travelling from the line of the arm to the second circle from the dot. Such decoration is intriguing as similar artefacts found to date all seem to have been undecorated (Williams 2007, 6; reference is made to this artefact). A number of examples can be found on this database, refs.: " KENT-E0A1F4 , " NLM-C681E7 . Consulting the second of these examples reveals that the strap loops often do not survive intact. This loops on this object are all less than half complete; one is missing entirely. The arms joining them to the boss are short at c. 6.5mm, and are 5.5-6.5mm wide. Some of the loop remnants have been bent upwards presumably as a result of plough damage. | Subjects: | four-way harness link | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Webley, Robert - Portable Antiquities Scheme | Identifier: | http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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