BROOCH

An incomplete cast and gilt copper-alloy brooch, either a small shallow saucer brooch or a button brooch of early early-medieval date (5th - 6th century AD) with Salin style I decoration.

The brooch would have been circular but has been chipped around its circumference so that it is now sub-oval. It is not possible to identify whether the rim would have been upturned or not.

The front of the plate has chipped gouged decoration of Stalin style I of disarticulated pieces of at least one animal. This includes a head facing right (indicated in the image in red), the back leg or tail or an animal formed of a sub-oval spiral (indicated in the image in purple),  and a more ambiguous element of an irregular coiled line ((indicated in the image in blue), potentially representing a body and front leg or maybe a wing. This is surrounded by am incised double concentric circular border.

The reverse of the brooch is undecorated but has the remains of two sub-trapezoidal lugs from the pin mechanism. Both are 1.3mm wide and projects 1.9mm from the plate. The iron pin is lost to corrosion although traces of corrosion product are present on each lug.

The brooch is mostly a medium green colour although a large proportion of the front surface is gilded, with only small patches being lost of abrasion.

The brooch is 18.9mm long, 13.6mm wide, 4.5mm thick including the lugs, 2.6mm without, and weighs 2.05 grams,

Disarticulated zoomorphic decoration a common theme for brooches, mounts, and other decorative pieces in the Early Medieval period. Designs ranged from more snakelike creatures (as seen in WAW-6D8C42 and LEIC-36241D) to simply displaying individual body parts such as legs or claws (as seen on the headplate of SOM-C2A071). The use of Salin’s Style I decoration in these instances suggests a date of c. AD 480 to 570.