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Description: | Cast lead weight, possibly a spindle whorl. Biconical with a perforation running through the centre. Outer diameter of 31.5mm, and the central perforation is 6.7mm in diameter. The object is 11.0mm thick, and it has a mass of 43.4g. The object has a pitted light brown/grey surface. Both sides of the weight are decorated with raised pellets and ribs, although these are more pronounced on one side. These weighs are not yet completely understood. It is possible they could have been spindle whorls - at the Austin Friary in Leicester (see Mellor and Pearce, 1981), a decorated whorl was found, still on its spindle, in a 13th to 15th century context. Geake (2001, p66) states: "Dating of lead whorls is difficult. The drop spindle with which they were used continued in use until the end of the Medieval period in London and Winchester (Egan, 1998, "The Medieval Household: Daily Living c1150 - c1450", 255-261; and Biddle, 1990, "Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester"), and for perhaps a century longer in Norfolk (Margeson, 1993, "Norwich Households: Medieval and Post Medieval finds from Norwich Survey Excavations 1971 - 78",184-5)." She adds that, in Cottam in East Yorkshire, detectorists found decorated whorls in ploughsoil over the site of Roman buildings (Geake, 2001, p66).
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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