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Description: | The brooch is a Colchester Two-Piece of Polden Hill type. The brooch is made from cast copper alloy and is incomplete.
In plan, the brooch has short semi-cylindrical wings with caps on each end. In profile the head of the brooch (i.e. the wings and the caps), is quite narrow. The wing caps are drop-shaped and are perforated by a single hole. One of the wing caps is complete and contains a fragment of the now missing copper axis bar, in its perforation. The other wing cap is incomplete. The spring and pin are both missing. The ends of the wings are decorated by a 2.6mm wide knurled rib, with a thinner plain rib on their inside edge.
The bow head is humped and is flanked on either side by small crescent shaped appendages. The appendages are decorated with knurling around their edges. In the centre of the hump, at the junction of the wings, is a single perforated lug. A fragment of the copper alloy external chord, used to secure the spring, is still attached to the lug. The lug itself extends forwards over the bow hump to form a median knurled rib, which extends to just below the depth of the wings. The brooch has a narrow, tapering and undecorated bow, which is D-shaped in cross-section. In profile the bow is one continuous curve. The brooch has a deep integral catchplate, which is 29.7mm in length and 16.2mm wide. The catchplate has two perforations. The upper perforation is sub-triangular. Along the lower edge of the triangle is a single step. The step impacts on the perforation below which is almost triangular in shape, except for a slight knop along its upper edge, which is caused by the step in the perforation above. The brooch has a folded pin rest. Looking at the reverse of the brooch in plan, one can see that the upper and lower edge of the pin rest is decorated by a single traverse groove. The reverse of the bow is flat.
The brooch is mid grey-green in colour and is heavily abraded along the catchplate and the reverse of the wings. There is also slight pitting to the front of the bow. In terms of overall preservation, despite the damage the brooch is in a fair condition. The width of the brooch across the wings is 22.2mm and the length from the wings to the foot is 63.2mm. The thickness of the head is 12.6mm and its weight is 12.46g.
A brooch which is similar to the recorded example can be seen in Hattatt (Hattatt. R 1987. Brooches of Antiquity. Oxbow: Oxford, Fig 34; no.895). This example differs from the recorded object by having two knurled ribs instead of one on the wings; slightly larger appendages and two extra circular perforations on the catchplate. Polden Hill brooches are Roman and date to around 50-75 AD. The perforations in the catchplate suggest that the recorded object is possibly an early example (see notes). | 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: | 50
75 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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