The Portable Antiquities Scheme

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Copper-alloy cast buckle frame and plate, the latter incomplete due to an old break. The frame is 34mm long and 17mm wide; it is flat and 2.5mm thick. The outer edge is incurved to produce a concave M shape; the inner curve of the frame then steps out to the junction with the plate, where the edge is straight. The frame has been cast in one with the plate; a worn circular perforation is present near to the inner edge of the frame, which would have held the pin. To either side of the pin hole is a smaller rivet hole, one now broken through; there is also a broken central perforation, probably part of an openwork design. The small surviving edge of the plate appears to taper, and the plate would probably originally have been triangular. This buckle is late Roman in date.

H. W. Böhme studied buckles with integral triangular plates as part of his survey of late Roman artefacts in Britain, and the settlement of England by the earliest Anglo-Saxons (Böhme 1986, Liste 1, Abb. 5, Abb. 14). He dated them to the middle or second half of the 4th century and his map shows that they are found in small numbers not only in England and South Wales but also along the European frontier of the Roman Empire, along the Rhine and Danube rivers.

Böhme did not, however, include buckles with incurved frames, although buckles with incurved frames and separate plates of other shapes are discussed by Simpson (1976) who again dates them to the second half of the fourth century.

Other buckles with incurved frames (also called kidney-shaped, heart-shaped or concave) and integral triangular openwork plates can be seen on the PAS database at LIN-6312A0, NLM-016B08 and ESS-E52552. Buckles with D-shaped frames and integral triangular openwork plates can be seen at GLO-FA9938 and NARC-C6E5B8.

• Simpson, C. J., 1976 Belt-buckles and strap-ends of the later Roman Empire, Britannia, VII, , pp..
• H. W. Böhme, 1986 Das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Britannien und die Angelsächische Besiedlung Englands im 5. Jahrhundert, 33 pt. 2, pp..

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Created: Tuesday 28th January 2003
Updated: Thursday 24th February 2011