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Description: | Fragment of foot from a copper-alloy great square-headed brooch, made from very grey metal. The fragment is decorated with three thick curving relief lines which (together with a presumed original fourth) make up a cross or lozenge shape and which represent the footplate frame of the brooch. In the centre is a rounded boss, but between the boss and the footplate frame there is no decoration. One arm of the cross (or corner of the lozenge) extends 11 mm from the edge of the boss to a break. An adjacent arm extends only 8 mm before the two relief lines of the footplate frame are crossed over by a similar curving line which is decorated with a triple longitudinal groove. This is very close to another break, but it is possible to see one of the undecorated relief lines of the footplate frame emerging from the other side of the decorated line. The decorated line does not appear to continue beyond the far edge of the undecorated line. Some of the breaks follow the line of the footplate frame, and two of them are about 3-4 mm distant from the frame with an undecorated gap in between. These breaks have bevelled edges and may be following grooves which would of course have been areas of weakness. On the reverse there is no evidence of a catchplate (the fragment probably does not extend high enough up the foot for that); the only feature is an incomplete off-centre shallow rectangular depression. Although the fragment was probably originally flat, it is now distorted into an irregular curve and has a rough, corroded surface; it may have been distorted by heat, for example from a cremation pyre. There is no exact parallel in Hines 1997, but three of his groups (IV, IX and XV) contain parallels to the arrangement of relief lines, with the decorated line forming the headframe of a profile mask in a side lobe of the footplate. The closest are perhaps a gilded copper-alloy example from Rothley, Leicestershire (Group IV, Plate 17b) which has the same arrangement of stranded and undecorated lines; Haslingfield and Lakenheath (Group IX, Plates 31b and 32a); and most of Group XV (Plates 46-49). The Rothley example is perhaps closest in having not only a circular central boss but also a gap without cast ornament (although with some punched circles added after casting) around the boss. On the Rothley brooch, however, the decorated line continues to either side of the footplate frame, and some of the Group IX and XV are closer to the Chippenham fragment in this single area. There does not appear to be any parallel among any of Hines's corpus, however, for the undecorated area outside the footplate frame. Early Anglo-Saxon, sixth century AD. | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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