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Description: | Fragment of a Frankish silver-gilt square-headed brooch. The fragment consists of the lower end of the bow and the adjacent top end of the foot-plate, with the catch-plate on the back, from a square-headed brooch. Copper rivets on the left and right of the bow indicate that a break across it was repaired in antiquity. All that survives of the decoration are sunken panels on the bow, a fan-shaped panel of short ridges radiating from the base of it, and parts of two curved elements (from the necks of two original animal heads) at the top. But these can all be closely paralleled on a complete, silver-gilt brooch from Trivières, Hainaut, Belgium, including the slight midrib in sunken relief on the bow. This brooch belongs to Kühn's Rittersdorf type, which is distributed mainly in the Middle Rhineland, northern France and southern Belgium, as well as in southeastern England (H. Kühn, 1974, Die Germanischen Bügelfibeln der Völkerwanderungszeit in Süddeutschland, Graz, pp. 1146-1161, pl. 312: 44, 27). The pointed shape and especially the ridging of the "fan" on the Eastry fragment are, however, typical of continental brooches of both this and other types, indicating that the Eastry find is a Frankish import into early Anglo-Saxon Kent. But Kühn's dating of the Rittersdorf type to the early 7th century is too late in most, if not all cases, and a 6th-century date is to be preferred. Surface metal analysis at the British Museum indicated an approximate silver content of 91%. It is mercury gilt.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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