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Description: | Fragment of copper alloy Anglo-Saxon brooch. This fragment represents one of the side lobes from the footplate of a great square headed brooch. It is semicircular in plan, having been broken along the flat edge where it would have joined the main body of the brooch. The fragment is decorated with a face mask. The mask consists of a central raised cross, with the lower arm of the cross flaring into a triangle to form the nose. Either side of the nose is a raised dot to represent the eyes. To the outer edge of each eye is a curved triangle, presumably representing the curved cheek pieces of a helmet. In the upper angles of the cross is raised triangle, completing the top of the helmet. The lobe is broken at the bottom of the face, but presumably there would also have been a raised moustache. A pair of incised lines that create a curved border surrounds the facemask. This border is divided internally by transverse incised lines, creating two rectangular sections, divided by two square sections at the top of the helmet. The square sections are decorated with vertical incised lines, whilst the flanking rectangular sections are decorated with horizontal lines. This is all viewed with the head facing straight on, but given the position of the side lobes, the face and border would be viewed side on, with the nose pointing towards the foot plate. The fragment is flat, but the face mask portion is slightly convex and the reverse side is correspondingly concave. Gilding survives to the front of the brooch, mostly within the incised lines and between the raised motifs. The patina of the object is an even mid green to front and back. The line of the break is thin, but is worn smooth, suggesting that it occurred in antiquity. When viewed with the broken edge to the left, the fragment is 17.98mm wide, 22.20mm high, 2.58mm thick and weighs 3.53g. An example of a brooch with a facemask side lobe can be seen in MacGregor and Bollick, 1993, page 17, number 13.12. Great square headed brooches date from just before the beginning of the 6th century and rapidly go out of fashion about 75 years later. | 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: | 500
600 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Caroline McDonald | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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