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Description: | An Early Medieval Anglo-Scandinavian cast copper-alloy pendant with devolved Ringerike style decoration, dating it to the 11th century. The pendant is lozenge-shaped and has inlaid (niello?), zoomorphic and openwork decoration. The top corner is the suspension mechanism; a copper alloy bar is held by two projecting lugs to form a hinge. The pendant is essentially a fleur-de-lis shape, pointing downwards, but the side feathers are depicted as beasts with open jaws, biting their own tails. The side corners terminate in trefoil shapes. The lower corner is the oval central feather of the fleur-de-lis. It is linked to the side corners by a biconcave bar, leaving openwork apertures on eaither side of the central fleur element, and in the centre of the circular animals. Although badly worn, traces of an inlay, probably niello, picking out the details is visible. The metal has a purple brown patina. The pendant is 41.2mm long, 40.2mm wide and 5.27mm thick across the suspension mechanism. 13.81g.A close parallel is YORYM-01B933 but there are also less clear matching examples on the database: DENO-D73301, NLM-ECF7F6 and DENO-1A4B33. The last record notes that "Another very similar complete example was found in Norwich (Margeson 1997, fig. 36) with very clear animal-head decoration showing that the corner knops are the ears or horns of the pair of animal heads.".There are also clearly closely related objects which have a different suspension mechanism: NLM-574F83 and NLM-3CD626. These could also be interpreted as strap ends.
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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