Plate

43 sf. 49 A plain circular plate with a pierced lug behind for a bilateral spring and the catch-plate which has a small projection at the top where it joins the plate. The front has deliberate scratch marks as though to secure something, but no trace remains of what that might have been.

 


49

A plain disc, 34mm in diameter, having no visible evidence of any application of enamel or metal plating. The brooch has a single lug and the spring is absent but there are traces of an iron axis bar. The catch-plate has a scooped out profile. The face of the plate carries a number of fine scratch-marks, the majority of which run generally along the axis of the pin on the back of the plate. These may have been caused by abrasion with stones etc. in the soil over years of disturbance. However, the non-random alignment and the lack of observable difference in patination over the entire surface, suggests that they were primarily caused by a one-time event in antiquity. They could be marks left by the manufacturing process.

There should have been an applied plate, almost certainly with a repousse' design, which would then place the brooch amongst those which include designs derived from coins (Goodchild 1941) belonging basically to the 2nd century.


44 sf. 187 No trace is left of the pin-fixing arrangement. The brooch consists of a cone rising from a flat plate fitted with a bordering ridge. There are three cross-cut mouldings on the cone, one at the base and the other two further up.

 



187

A small disc plate brooch with a conical centre, (Tutulus type). The hollow cone rises from a flat plate with a raised marginal border. The cone has a knurled rib around the base and two further plain ribs dividing the brooch into four concentric panels when viewed in plan. The lug is absent and there is a remnant of a short catch-plate with no observable evidence of a hook. Hattat's BOA 1987 p185 states that 51 examples are known, just over half of which were found in France. Only 6 examples have been found in Britain, these being well scattered between the latitude of the Humber and southern England. Five were found in coastal counties and the sixth was found in Oxon. The two examples illustrated in BOA have only two ribs and are without the two inner ribs present on this example. Hull's 257B.

A dated parallel from one of the Grange Road burials, Winchester, belongs to the Flavian period (Biddle 1967, 245, fig.4,14).


45 sf. 335 The pin is hinged. The brooch is made up of a thick square plate with a circular excrescence in the middle of each side and a tall circular boss in the middle. The borders of the square are cross-cut and there are in the spandrels and on the projections circular stamps made up of a raised central boss with a raised annulus round that. The top of the boss is set with a white glassy enamel in which was once set seven spots presumably of a similar material, but of a different colour.

 


335

A quadriform composite plate brooch consisting of a 13mm square panel with circular lobes attached to the four sides. A deep round boss, hollow at the rear, occupies the centre of the square panel. The boss contains a fill of white enamel with one central and six surrounding hollows which presumably originally held pellets of a different colour enamel. The hollow behind the boss carries marks from lathe-work on the mould or prototype. The edges of the square have incised lines on the front surface, within the frame of which, at each corner, are double concentric circle punch marks. This circular theme is repeated on each of the four lugs. The hinged pin is deeply curved and the deep catch-plate is unperforated. There are numerous similarities with Hattat's BOA 1133 which has crown shaped appendages. This has the same square with lined edges, the same corner circles and the same curved pin although the boss profile is plainer on this example. This was found on the Continent. Hattat quotes an example from Switzerland, (Riha 1979 ibid 1698), described as having a square centre with round lobes -which sounds similar. (See also Hattat BOA 1093). Also a simpler one from Nor-Nour. (Hull Pl. 808, 6180). The brooch is very much a link between the lozenge plate and the composites which are usually more fussy.

Without citing many parallels or how the elements here were combined in a host of different ways in what is a large family of continental brooches, the dating is uniformly 2nd century.