The Portable Antiquities Scheme

Cite record | Embed record | Print | | Report

An incomplete silver Birdlip type brooch dating to the late Iron Age or early Roman period. The brooch has a trumpet-shaped head with an integral spring behind with three turns remaining. The spring has an internal chord. The pin is missing. The bow is comma shaped in profile and is decorated with a fully rounded and collared reel at the top. Below the reel is a small upturned 'beak'. The bow below the beak is triangular in cross-section and tapers to the foot. The foot is missing, as is most of the catchplate. The catchplate splits from the bow towards the base.

Treasure reference number 2011 T518.

This brooch is a silver version of a birdlip or beaked bow brooch. Similar brooches made from bronze and very rarely silver and gold are known in small numbers across central England. They probably date to the late 1st century BC and early to middle 1st Century AD (c.30BC-AD50). Several have been found in closely dateable contexts during archaeological excavations such as Dragonby in Lincolnshire and Kingsholm in Gloucestershire. Although a late Iron Age type of brooch, they were probably still worn for a short time after the Roman Conquest. The most well known silver brooch of this type is the example in bronze from the Birdlip burial in Glouctershire. A gilded silver brooch of this type was found at Dragonby in Lincolnshire, part of another has been found at the East Leicestershire late Iron Age coin hoard site. Gold examples from Lincolnshire come from Market Rasen and Normaby le Wold.

No references cited so far.

QR barcode

If you have a mobile phone equipped with QR recognition software, you can go directly to the webpage that this record resides at. Every record has an individual one of these.

Comment on this artefact's record

Audit data

Created: Thursday 1st September 2011
Updated: Thursday 22nd September 2011