BROOCH

Silver brooch of Weetch type 30.B, in the shape of an upright bird in profile, with large head and straight downward-pointing beak. The eye is in the shape of a large flattened pellet, with a recess, either indicating the pupil, or originally meant to contain some glass or stone inset. Wing and feathers are sensitively detailed with linear grooves and mouldings. The tail is missing, and a further damaged area can be seen at the neck: a fresh jagged crack line shows the head to have sheared off and to have been glued back in modern times.

On its back, the bird carries what might be a small cross, with the right arm broken off, and a piece missing, but with a fragment still attached to the bird's neck.

On the reverse of the brooch, a rather corroded and damaged 'lump' may be part of the attachment of the brooch. It is likely that the brooch could have been used as a pendant, with a cord or chain passing in the eyelet formed between the bird's neck and the cross/fledgling: this might account for the break and the damage to the area.

A gilded-silver parallel for such iconography was found in 2004 at Arlington, East Sussex (2004 T379; SUSS-44F203) and other cross-on-bird brooches made from copper-alloy are recorded on the PAS database at SF-7B3CA5, BERK-5DED86 and SF-BCC403. Cross-on-bird brooches are a relatively uncommon type, with finds recorded by Pedersen (1999) from Denmark (fig. 11b), England (fig. 19c), Germany (figs. 20 and 22) and France (fig. 21). Their date-range centres on 800 AD (Pedersen 1999, 64). Also see A. Gannon (2003) The Iconography of Early Anglo-Saxon Coins, pp. 114-5, where it is argued that one of these brooches (from Berinsfield) carries a fledgling rather than a cross on its back.

It may be argued that it is a fledgling with upright wing, and not a cross, that our bird carries on its back, on account of the unusual proportion of the cross with rather elongated arms, and of the angle of the severed right one. Originally this would have engaged with the neck of the bird, just above the break: however, the area is rather damaged and worn, so it is debatable whether it represented the neck and head of the fledgling.

Whilst some of these brooches can be understood to follow in the tradition of bird-shaped Germanic ornaments, the addition of Christian symbols (see discussion in Gannon, ibid.) makes their devotional character evident. The beak of our bird could identify it either as a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, or as an eagle, symbolic of the Resurrection.

Non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface of the piece conducted at the British Museum indicated a silver content of approximately 97%.