BROOCH

near complete copper-alloy Roman enamelled disc brooch with chain loop, likely dating to the 2nd century AD.

Description: The brooch is made up of a circular plate and a sprung pin and catch arrangement on the reverse. The plate is decorated with three fields of champlevé enamel, the central field is circular and has no clear enamel remaining. The next field is a ring shaped and has a evenly spaced centrally placed round pellets around its' entire length. there is dark cobalt blue enamel remaining throughout. The outer field is also ring shaped but thinner and seems to contain lighter blue enamel but it is highly degraded.

The spring and catch arrangement is if standard type though the spring remains the pin has broken away and a piece of copper-alloy wire has been wrapped around the spring to try and fashion a crude replacement, however it is to fragile to realistically hold the brooch to clothing.

Measurements: 34.51mm long, 8.29mm thick (including the spring and catch arrangement, disc plate 2.07mm thick) and 14.78g in weight.

Discussion: Hattat (2000) illustrates a number of similar examples most notably no.1564 . These brooches all date to the 2nd century AD (Hattatt 1987, 167) Some similar examples are also known from the Lower Rhineland and Pannonia, although not from the upper Rhineland area. In general these large enamel disc brooches with few lugs or chain loop tend to be quite uncommon and there is a large degree of variation between their decorative designs so a creation of sub-types and based on such elements is difficult as is drawing parallels.