FIGURINE

A small copper alloy Roman fingurine of a tiger, probably a statuette, possibly part of a brooch, with silver inlay. The figure is moulded in three dimensions with the head, shoulders, back and upper parts of the legs survving, the ends of the legs are lost to old breaks which have also distorted the legs. There was probably a tail, now also missing. The underside of the body is hollowed out.

The head has open jaws, now worn with the ends missing. The very prominant pointed oval eyes with annulet centres were emphasised by silver inlay. There are no clear ears although there is corrosion which could obscure any worn breaks at this point. The relatively long neck is narrowest at the top, circular in section, and widens and thickens to the shoulders. The silver inlaid stripes survive best in this area. They are regularly spaced down the neck and the grooves that held the silver inlay deliberately end at a plain, flattened area running down the centre of the  underside of the neck. 

The shoulders, and thickened haunches at the top of the legs, show a change in direction of the strips which are angled to go across the top of the leg and transversely across the body. Thsis leaves a plain triangle at the top of the leg. The front legs are circular in cross section and end in rounded breaks, one is also bent in towards the other due to damage. The strips appear to continue down to the break.

The body is narrow and C-shaped in cross section with a convex top and concave base, 7.0mm wide by 5.4mm thick in the centre. Differential corrosion and some remaining sections show the regularly spaced  stripes continued along the full length of the body. The haunches of the back legs are also thickened and the circular sectioned legs survive only as short stubs. Again there is evidence for one band of silver inlay running across the top of the leg and probably more below. At the thickened rear between the legs at the back is an area defined by vertical silver inlay. This area is now worn and corroded and could have had a projecting tail or one that hung down between the back legs. 

The entire piece is 39.8mm long, 10.9mm wide at the rear haunches, the widest point, and is now 22.1mm tall. it weighs 12.01g.

Small three dimensional zoomorphic figurines are known from Roman Britain, usually originally on a separate or integral base. A wide range of animals are represented, standing felines include WILT-5A8A35, a leopard and BUC-0C7D27 a lion. The latter comparable in size to this example. PUBLIC-58C583 on this database appears similar, although with thicker legs and thinner head than this piece. A similar curled back tail to that on PUBLIC-58C583 would be compatible with the wear seen on this example. Without the base of the feet an alternative use as a brooch would also be possible such as the three dimensional horse brooches (LIN-09AF6A) , or hippocamp from Richborough (Bayley and Butcher, 2004, p125 no 354). However both those examples have the legs cast together giving a thickened base, unlike this example.

NMS-DB2ED6, a furniture fitting and WREX-41A737, a knife handle, both show tigers with stipes marked out with silver inlay and similar blunt muzzled heads and long necks. Tigers were associated with Bacchus, as they were thought to draw his chariot and so such a figurine might relate to his worship.

The footnote to paragraph 6 of the Treasure Act Code of Practice, states: 'where an object is made up of distinct components, only one of which is precious metal (for example, a gold binding on an amber object), the components will normally be treated as individual, associated objects'.  However in this case the silver foil inlay is not a distinct component but decoration that would not survive separate to the main piece and therefore, in line with other items with thick silver decoration such as SUSS-0559F7 it has not been reported as an item of potential Treasure.

There is a slight similarity to the Medieval standing animal buckles such as LEIC-9663A2 but the longer proportions and hollow underside is different and the style is more Roman.