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Description: | Fragment of foot from a florid cruciform brooch, partly distorted by heat. The fragment consists of a decorated triangular panel with traces of an undecorated rectangular terminal below, which has been torn away; the tear has bent the metal before breaking, and the break is now a little worn. The rectangular terminal is separated from the triangular panel by a line of beading. The triangular panel has a relief border, and is filled with Style I decoration, now worn and hence hard to decipher. There may be a single bird, with curly beak filling the apex at the top, body in the centre (formed from one broad and one narrow line) and hip, leg and foot filling the base. Outside the triangular panel, one lower corner is missing but the other has a projecting bird?s head looking upwards, with curly beak, round relief eye, and broad headframe outlined at the front with two narrow grooves. The curly beak wraps around to form a circular perforation. There is a rough edge in front of the headframe which may suggest that a projecting crest has broken off. The neck of the bird continues upwards as a frame around the triangular panel; it is decorated with a beaded line near the edge, with a dotted line just inside this. Traces of similar borders can be seen on the neck of the opposite bird, whose head is missing. Above the triangular panel the brooch is heavily distorted by heat. There are two lateral D-shaped projections, both with circular perforations, but between and above these no clear shape or decoration can be seen. There is a slightly off-centre central projection running upwards to an old and worn break, which is solid at the base and decorated with two broad transverse relief bands; above these the projection becomes hollow and rectangular in cross-section. To one side (the right) is a flatter curving projection, also running upwards to a worn break; to the other (the left) is the broken stub of what may have been a pair to this. The surface is further obscured by iron corrosion from a series of rivets which are clearly visible on the X-ray. There are two just above the D-shaped lateral projections, with another on the more complete curving right-hand projection. It is just possible that the left-hand projection has broken across a matching rivet hole. The best parallel for this brooch fragment is a florid cruciform brooch from North Luffenham, published in Medieval Archaeology 15 (1971), pl. IIIA. This is of Leeds and Pocock type Vi, all of which have a rectangular terminal beneath a triangular terminal filled with Style I, and with birds? heads to the lower corners. The fragment is thick, especially at the top where it is heat-distorted and very lumpy. It is hard to understand exactly how it has become so thick, and how the precise forms of the rectangular-section socket and the curving projection have been formed. There are none of the usual obvious miscasting errors, such as uncleaned seams or ingates. In an attempt to understand the fragment further, it was submitted to the British Museum?s Department of Conservation, Documentation and Science for analysis. The hypotheses were that the fragment might be a failed casting subsequently repaired by riveting (indicating metalworking on the site) or had been damaged by heat after manufacture, breakage and repair (perhaps indicating cremation burial on the site). The report (Analytical Request AR2005/6) reads as follows: ?The piece appears to be from an Anglo-Saxon cruciform brooch and has clearly been partially molten. It was not immediately obvious whether this damage took place during manufacture or subsequently, possibly during a botched repair or a cremation. All of these scenarios would be interesting, the former evidence that brooches of this type were made in Essex, the latter that the rite of cremation was being practised there. It was submitted for examination by the Saffron Walden Museum (receipt no. 1516). As a preliminary to the investigation the brooch was analysed by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence. As this was performed directly on the heavily corroded and totally unprepared surface, the analysis is only qualitative. This showed the metal to be of copper alloyed with tin, lead, zinc with a substantial trace of arsenic, a mixed alloy quite typical of the Anglo-Saxon period. The fragment certainly has been partially melted. Unfortunately it is difficult to ascertain from the degree of burning itself whether the piece is a failed casting or an artefact that had been strongly heated after manufacture. Examination of the remains of the decoration showed that they were too worn and damaged by partial melting to ascertain whether the designs were likely to have been on the original casting or had been worked on afterwards. There is no evidence that the melting represents an attempt to fuse this fragment to the now missing other end of the brooch. If this was the origin of the melting then the operation went disastrously wrong, badly damaging the rest of the brooch but failing to fuse the metal with the other end. However, at the end where the evidence of melting is most obvious there are the remains of several badly corroded iron pins. Similar pins are known on other brooches as part of repairs where the neck of the brooch has broken. The join would have been purely mechanical, held by the pins. As the brooch had survived long enough to be in need of repair it can hardly be a failed casting, but instead has been in some conflagration, although not necessarily a cremation.? (Paul Craddock and Andrew Middleton, 23 February 2005). | 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: | 550
600 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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