The Portable Antiquities Scheme

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Circular sheet of gold with a projection to one side decorated with four longitudinal grooves. Opposite the projection the sheet appears to have punchmarks or crimping around part of the circumference. There are quite a few accidental indentations which have all been made from the undecorated face, leaving bumps on the decorated face. I suspect that this object may be the back plate from a cabochon pendant, perhaps at an early stage of manufacture or perhaps never made well and later damaged. If I am right, the 'crimping' around the circumference would be to hold a beaded wire border (or possibly the imprint of such a border) and the grooved projection would have been bent over to the front to form the loop of the pendant. A rounded ('en cabochon') stone or piece of glass wood then have been fixed to the gold. I feel that it is less likely, though still possible, that the object is the backplate from a bulla pendant (like a cabochon pendant although made entirely of metal). These tend to have the grooved loop attached to the front rather than to the backplate. It is also possible that the object is a blank for the convex front of a bulla pendant, although it seems rather thin for this. Whichever of these possibilities is right, the date of this pendant would be the second half of the seventh century AD.

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Created: Wednesday 8th November 2000
Updated: Thursday 24th February 2011