BROOCH

An incomplete Iron Age La Tène III Nauheim derivative brooch dating to the period c.25 BC- AD 100. The brooch is missing its pin, part of its sprung head and part of its catchplate.

At the top of the bow is the head of the brooch. The head is made of three surviving coils, two to the left of the bow, one to the right (if viewed from the front). The right would have had a fourth coil from which a pin would have extended. The first coil to the left of the bow is a direct continuation of it. From this coil, it forms a second coil before curving underneath the bottom of the bow before folding back up to curve into the coil on the right end of of the head. 

From the head of the brooch the bow is broadly oval in cross section being consistent in width and thickness for most of its length only narrowing and thickening into a flattened sub-triangular catchplate in its lower third. The upper portion of the bow is decorated by two sets of incised diagonal lines creating a downwards repeating chevrons pattern for a small portion of the bow.

 The brooch is a medium green colour.

The brooch is 39.5mm in length, 7.5mm in width at the head and weighs 2.02 grams.

Similar brooches are illustrated by Hattat (2000, 289, fig. 148) which are termed as La Tène III brooches. Mackreth also illustrates similar examples (Mackreth 2011, Plate 9, particularly No 4206. He terms these Nauheim Derivative types which he suggests date to the first centuries BC and AD (Mackreth 2011, 13-14).