Rights Holder: Suffolk County Council
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BRIDLE BIT
Unique ID: SF1894
Object type certainty: Certain
Workflow
status: Published 
Cast copper alloy harness cheekpiece fragment; flat roughly oval openwork plate tapers in width slightly towards one edge; the mount has engraved detail on the front surface and is in the form of a backward-looking profiled beast's head with spines on its neck, defined by four protruding curves along one edge of plate, each decorated with a central ring-and-dot; immediately behind the head where the curvature of the neck is most pronounced is a prominent crest, again decorated at its outer edge with three ring-and-dots; the head of the beast has a bump over the eye which is represented by 2 punched ring-and-dots, the animal's mouth is shown gaping and extended with a bump above its nostrils which are represented by ring-and-dots; the mount is broken beyond this point, though the curve of the metal suggests there would have been an additional openwork piercing; the extant oval piercings are placed in-between the beast's jaws and in-between the lower jaw and its neck; the reverse is plain; this is an example of a series of Anglo-Scandinavian harness fitting decorated with zoomorphic motifs related to the Ringerike and Urnes styles of Viking art; as MDS 004z
Class:
cheekpiece
Sub class: Williams Type 1
Subsequent actions
Subsequent action after recording: Returned to finder
Chronology
Broad period: EARLY MEDIEVAL
Subperiod from: Late
Period from: EARLY MEDIEVAL
Period to: MEDIEVAL
Ascribed Culture:
Anglo-Scandinavian style
Date from: Circa AD 1000
Date to: Circa AD 1100
Dimensions and weight
Quantity: 1
Length: 50.5 mm
Width: 30 mm
Thickness: 4.6 mm
Discovery dates
Date(s) of discovery: Tuesday 1st February 2000
Personal details
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Materials and construction
Primary material: Copper alloy
Manufacture method: Cast
Decoration style: Zoomorphic
Spatial metadata
Region: Eastern (European Region)County or Unitary authority: Suffolk (County)
District: St. Edmundsbury (District)
To be known as: SUFFOLK LACKFORD
Spatial coordinates
Unmasked grid reference accurate to a 100 metre square.
References cited
No references cited so far.
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Timeline of associated dates
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