Rights Holder: Kent County Council
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BROOCH
Unique ID: KENT-B2E0C6
Object type certainty: Certain
Workflow
status: Published 
A fragment of a cast gilt-silver great square-headed brooch dating to the early-medieval period.
Description: The fragment appears to comprise one of the side lobes on the foot-plate together with a small section of the arm that originally connected the lobe to the inner panel. The lobe has a flange surrounding a raised thick border, within which is a stylised mask formed of a beaded crescent encompassing above two pellets and a V-shaped motif, possibly intended to represent hair or headgear, eyes and mouth respectively. The remains of the arm comprise a flange with beaded border, inside of which is a raised inner border slightly concave in shape. The front of the brooch fragment is largely gilded, excluding the raised frames. The reverse is plain and not gilded.
The fragment has a jagged break across the edge, which is partially worn. Part of the outer lobe is also chipped.
Measurements: Length: 19.01mm, Width: 14.03mm, Weight: 2.22g
Discussion: Too little of the brooch survives to assign it to a typological category, but it has features which resemble Hines' Group III (Hines 1997, pp. 41-8), roughly dating to the first quarter of the sixth century. Great square-headed brooches are a familiar piece of early Anglo-Saxon material culture, with many examples recorded from graves and complete and fragmentary examples recorded on the PAS database.
Conclusion: The artefact dates to before 1716 and is made of more than 10% precious metals. Therefore it constitutes potential Treasure under the stipulations of The Treasure Act 1996.
Class: great square headed
Subsequent actions
Subsequent action after recording: Returned to finder
Treasure details
Treasure case tracking number: 2017T1007
Chronology
Broad period: EARLY MEDIEVAL
Subperiod from: Early
Period from: EARLY MEDIEVAL
Subperiod to: Early
Period to: EARLY MEDIEVAL
Date from: Circa AD 500
Date to: Circa AD 520
Dimensions and weight
Quantity: 1
Length: 19.01 mm
Width: 14.03 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight: 2.22 g
Discovery dates
Date(s) of discovery: Friday 13th October 2017
Personal details
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Other reference numbers
Treasure case number: 2017T1007
Materials and construction
Primary material: Silver
Manufacture method: Cast
Decoration style: Zoomorphic
Completeness: Fragment
Surface Treatment: Gilded
Spatial metadata
Region: South East (European Region)County or Unitary authority: Kent (County)
District: Dover (District)
To be known as: Near Deal
Spatial coordinates
Grid reference source: GPS (from the finder)
Unmasked grid reference accurate to a 1 metre square.
References cited
| Author | Publication Year | Title | Publication Place | Publisher | Pages | Reference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hines, J. | 1997 | A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches | Woodbridge | The Boydell Press |
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Timeline of associated dates
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