BROOCH

An incomplete copper alloy and gilt Early Early-Medieval (450-550) saucer brooch, with damage to the catchplate and lugs on the reverse. It measures 46.50mm diameter at the top of the saucer edge, 37.13mm inside base of saucer edge (c.38mm to reverse), is 12.45mm max.thickness and weighs 33.24g.

The saucer brooch is decorated with seven running spirals around a central ring and dot, a concentric ring joining outside of the spiral and another two concentric rings around this. The saucer edge is 7.7mm high and c.2mm thick. Gilding survives on the inside of the saucer edge and along concentric rings especially. There are traces of gilding on the spiral decoration.

To the reverse are two D-shaped lugs for the pin bar. One lug is partially broken (across the piercing) and the corroded remains of an iron bar remain. The catchplate below missing its curl (worn break).

A number of similar saucer brooches with running spirals are shown in MacGregor and Bolick 1993, pp.42-45. MacGregor and Bolick comment that brooches of this type were produced characteristically as single castings, whose dished forms give rise to their name. Normally, women (and, occasionally, young girls) wore them in pairs at the shoulder or the breast. Tania Dickinson in Dickinson, T. 1991 'Material Culture as Social Expression: The Case of Saxon Saucer Brooches with running Spiral Decoration' Studien zur Sachsenforschung Hildesheim, has concluded that the five spiral running design originated on the Continent and developed from the late 4th to mid 5th centuries. In England the burials are more likely to have taken place between the late 5th and mid 6th centuries.