STRAP FITTING

Incomplete Romano British/Early Saxon strap fitting: counter-plate, from an elaborate set of military belt set. It comprises a five-sided front plate with a trefoil terminal at the apex of the triangular edge. There is a perforation in the outer foil of the terminal, and one smaller perforation and one incomplete blind hole in the two remaining foils. Both sides of the plate have been cut-down in antiquity. The elaborate chip-carved geometric decoration comprises, on the (originally) rectangular half of the plate, two rectangular panels containing running scrolls, between the remains of four, square, panels, each of which contains a swastika. The triangular half of the plate has a rectangular central panel containing an octofoil, within small sub-triangular geometric panels and bordering lines of punched dots. There are twin rivet-holes at the worn transversely notched straight outside edge, one of which contains a copper alloy rivet that retains a fragment of the triangular back-plate on the reverse. Part of the terminal of the back-plate, now separated from the other fragment, remains attached by solder to the reverse of the front-plate. Cf. a broadly similar example in Bullinger (1969), Taf. XXXVIII, no.1. Late 4th-early fifth century AD. The mount may have been cut down for use as a different sort of Late Roman fitting, like those of pentagonal shape from Bad Kreuznach and Tamuda (Bullinger, 1969, Taf. 9, 4-5), or less plausibly as a strap-end like examples from Rhenen and Samson, although it appears the buckle loop would have to have been quite large (H.W. Böhme, 1974, Germanische Grabfunde, Taf. 68,6, and 98, 17).