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Description: | Decorated swivel, thought to be part of an elaborate dog's lead or similar. Made from copper alloy, it has two separate elements. In the centre is a flattened sphere, at least partly hollow, and measuring 17 x 27.5 mm. The sides of this are decorated with a series of oblique ribs which have a slight reversed-S shape to them. The flattened faces to top and bottom are slightly raised, and are decorated with short radiating grooves. In the middle of one of the flattened faces is an integrally cast stem in the shape of a cuboid with the corners cut off. The cuboid is 13 mm long and measures 7 x 8 mm in cross-section. Two faces are decorated with a sunken lozenge enclosing a counter-relief quatrefoil; the other two faces are joined by a circular perforation. The second element is a separate swivelling counterpart in the middle of the other flattened face. This is identical in its shape, decoration and perforation to the integral element at the other end, but the cuboid is slightly shorter as below there is a narrowed waist. This passes through a perforation in the flattened face, allowing it to swivel freely. Both elements would originally have held a suspension ring. This swivel is similar to two openwork swivels (with two swivelling ends) recently found in East Anglia, one excavated at Dragon's Hall, King Street, Norwich, and the other metal-detected from Market Weston, Suffolk (sf577/4759). Although the Kirby Cane example is simpler in both manufacture and decoration, the overall shape is similar and the shape and decoration of the two ends is identical. The openwork ones have both been examined by John Cherry of the British Museum, who comments that they are related, in terms of their openwork copper-alloy casting, to circular openwork staff heads dating from the 11th and 12th centuries; this date has therefore also been suggested for the Kirby Cane example. Their function is uncertain; it has been suggested that they are components of dogs' leads, and lapdogs were certainly popular high-status companions at the time (partly due to the fact that they kept one warm while inactive). Swivels could of course have had a number of other uses too. The complicated casting shows that they were high-status objects. | 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: | 1000
1300 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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