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Description: | The head and bow (foot lacking) of a small-long brooch with shallow bow and square head with small axe-shaped arms in-cast extending from the top and sides of the plate. The central plate of the head is 14mm across by 12mm high. The side arms are 4mm at the base splaying to 8mm, creating an overall width of 27mm if one allows for the fact that the dexter arm has been bent back out of true. The bow rises at a shallow, shelving angle over a distance of 3mm, and ends in a transverse groove, and then with a pair of 'knuckles' introduces the domed section of the bow arm proper. There are 16mm from the bottom of the headplate to the broken end of the bow, and the headplate including the uppermost arm is 20mm high. Despite some pitting it is clear that there is no surface-ornament punched or cast onto the headplate (by contrast with some other examples). The pin was attached by a single arched lug at the centre back of the headplate, which is now mostly corroded, among heavy iron residues (presumably from the pin, or was the lug also iron?). The lug was 6mm long from top to bottom, and very thin. No trace of the footplate remains. The small-long brooch is a characteristic feature of the migration period in East Anglia, with particular concentrations in the Lark Valley settlements, but also (as here) in the neighbourhood of Yaxley and Thornham, and also found in the Gipping system and other south-eastern valley settlements. It is a marker for the late VWZ phases leading up to c.570, from the later fifth century on. The cruciform type of small-long brooch is thought to have developed in northern Germany in imitation of the smaller cruciform brooches: if true, this strengthens the attribution to the first half of the sixth century rather than any much earlier date.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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