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Description: | Incomplete cast silver pin, the lower shank is missing. The head is offset on a short arm and carries a semicircular plate below an arc of three rounded beads linked on the front by narrower beaded bands. A neat ladder pattern is incised around the vertical edge of the front plate. The plate has on its main front surface a symmetrical pattern in low relief against a background inlay of degraded niello, with arcs forming a small central palmette and two outward spirals with lobed ends. The back of the arc of beads has pairs of incised lines running in radially from the top of each beaded collar.
This is an example of a pin type dating from the 4th or 5th century, known as a 'proto hand pin' because its offset ringed head is ancestral to an early medieval pin type, the hand-pin (S M Youngs (ed.), The Work of Angels. Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork 6th - 9th centuries AD (London, 1989), pp. 23-27). The Welton le Wold pin is similar to the silver and enamel beaded ring-pin found with a hoard at Oldcroft, Gloucestershire and associated with base coins dating from before 359 (C M Johns, `A Roman silver pin from Oldcroft, Gloucestershire', Antiquaries Journal 54, p. 295), but on the new find the ring of beads has begun to adopt a form closer to the later hand-pin series, having fewer and more prominent beads. The closest parallel is a pin excavated at Tripontium a Roman posting station on Watling street near modern Rugby (J Lucas, `Tripontium, third interim report', Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society Transactions 91 (1981), pp. 25-48). It is interesting that this pin type is so widely distributed in the early post-Roman world. The beads as seen on this pin are thought to have developed into the projecting tubes or 'fingers' of the early medieval `hand pins' fom Ireland and Scotland.
Dimensions and metal content:
Length: 20.6mm; head width: 10.3mm; weight: 2.2g. X-ray fluorescence analysis at the British Museum indicated an approximate silver content of 96 per cent per cent. | 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: | 300
500 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Daniel Pett | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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