Belt-Buckles and Strap-Ends of the Later Roman Empire: A Preliminary Survey of Several New Groups

Abstract

During the last half century a growing number of scholars have concerned themselves with the material remains of the later Roman and Migration periods. Discussion has centred, inter alia, on those classes of belt equipment which exhibit the kerbschnitt or ‘chip-carved’ manner of decoration, but surprisingly little mention has been made of those types of late Roman buckles and strap-ends that happen to fall outside the well-known categories of the ‘chip-carved’ material. The principal aim of the present paper is to propose a system of classification for these buckles and strap-ends, to discuss the evidence for their chronology, the likely area of their manufacture and the identity of those for whom they were intended. The catalogue which follows this discussion has been compiled primarily from a study of the published material, though it could be expected that a more extensive search in the museums and private collections of Europe and North Africa would substantially increase the number of pieces available for discussion. It is hoped that the evidence which this less well-known body of belt-equipment may afford will be of value to students of the later Roman military organization, both in Britain and on the continent.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.