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Description: | Mystery object made from copper alloy, now triangular in shape with the two surviving edges both very slightly incurved, but probably originally lozengiform. It is thick, flat and hollow, and is decorated on both faces and on both surviving edges. The object is broken across its widest part, with more missing from one face than from the other; each face has engraved decoration of a double-line border, which at one corner (a different one on each face) makes an angle which shows that the complete object was probably broken across the centre.
Towards the apex of each triangular face is a double transverse line, slightly skewed, cutting off a small panel. Within this panel on both faces is an engraved lozenge enclosing a very low relief quatrefoil. Below, all the decoration on one face is missing, and the other face has an unintelligible and incomplete series of dots and dashes within an unevenly engraved circle. The edges are both neatly engraved with a single-line border, within which are two criss-cross lines forming lozenges each filled with a low-relief quatrefoil. At the lower corner on each edge is a moulded boss, rounded with two engraved lines down the centre and a small triangular projection at each corner (oddly reminiscent of the bow of an early Anglo-Saxon cruciform brooch, but in miniature).
At the apex, each triangular face has a raised step which is decorated with transverse nicks. The edge faces then have a raised collar, with a central longitudinal groove, which runs a short way onto the triangular faces. From this springs more moulded decoration, this time in the shape of a double animal head; the top of one head, with oval engraved eyes and a flaring nose, is delineated on either of the triangular faces, and between them they form an open mouth from which the hollow interior projects as a short cylindrical tube. Within the hollow interior is packed some kind of vegetation; a fragment extracted appeared to be a compacted flower head, perhaps from some form of grass. It is impossible to say whether this filling is deliberate, and how old it might be. The decoration on the object, particularly the animal head, dates it to the medieval period. | Format: | text/html | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ | Publisher: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Rights holder: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Subjects: | archaeology | Temporal: | 1066
1540 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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