Image: Silver equal armed brooch (FindID 490952)

Description: Surface metal analysis conducted at the British Museum indicated an approximate silver content for the brooch of 93%, the rest being copper, gold and lead. The shattered gem was identified by Raman spectroscopy as garnet. The brooch is mercury gilded with traces of niello decoration and weighs 4.28 grams. The brooch is of equal-armed form, consisting of two half-oval plates linked by a short, flat bow, but one of the plates is broken at the end and on one side; length, 31.8mm (surviving); width, 18.9mm. The complete plate has a small terminal knob and a raised frame with a row of small, punched triangles enclosing a field of chip-carved ribbing round an empty, half-oval setting next to the junction with the bow. The other plate is similarly decorated and has a shattered garnet in the setting and traces of black niello in the triangles. The bow is decorated with interlocking triangles along the centre and a double rib on each side. The brooch represents a variant of a 6th-century type found also in the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Chessell Down, Isle of Wight; in Kent; at Mucking in Essex, and occasionally in France (C.J. Arnold, 1982, The Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of the Isle of Wight, British Museum Press, 51, pl. 2h, figs 26:23 and 52; H. Hamerow, 1993, Excavations at Mucking, vol. 2: The Anglo-Saxon settlement, English Heritage Archaeological Report, no. 21, London, 61-2, fig. 173: GH190.1; C. Pilet et al., 1990, 'Les nécropoles de Giberville (Calvados), fin du Ve siècle - fin du VIIe siècle après J.-C.', Archéologie Médiévale, 20, 3-140, pl. 7: 30,2). The brooch from the Salisbury area would therefore qualify as Treasure under two of the stipulated criteria of the Treasure Act: it is more than 300 years old and the precious metal content exceeds 10%. The object is not disclaimed at either a local or a national level, since Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum has expressed an interest in acquiring it and the British Museum would attempt to do so should local efforts fail. B.M. Ager Curator Department of Prehistory & Europe British Museum
Title: Silver equal armed brooch
Credit: https://finds.org.uk/database/ajax/download/id/414595 Catalog: https://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/414595/recordtype/artefacts Artefact: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/490952
Author: Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, Richard Henry, 2013-02-04 13:22:56
Permission: Attribution-ShareAlike License version 4.0 (verified 19 November 2020)
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
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