UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT

A cast copper alloy 'moustache-shaped' object of late Bronze Age or Iron Age date. The object has a narrowed body with two sweeping swollen drop shaped ends which taper towards pointed terminals. There are five panels of linear grooves on each rounded side, with medial bands running down the middle, flanked by two panels of oblique lines and then two outer peripheral panels of lines running roughly parallel to those along the centre. The tapering lower projections are undecorated. There is a sub rectangular hollow between the projections suggesting the object fitted to something.

A number of these so called 'moustache' shaped objects of have now been recovered, with distinct variants identifiable. They are thought to date from the middle Bronze Age to the late Iron Age. Their function is uncertain, although recess in the body of this example (and in many of the others known) suggests that they were mounted on something, possibly a dagger handle or on the end of a scabbard; however the absence of evidence makes this entirely conjectural.

One example was found in the Salisbury Hoard which contained Bronze Age material but was buried in the Iron Age (Stead, 1998, no.117). Another example was found in a Middle Bronze Age context at Clay Farm, Cambridgeshire (Current Archaeology March 2012, Issue 264, 35).