The Alloys of a Sample of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches

Abstract

The Potential Importance of the detailed measurement and study of the proportions of different elements in metal alloys used for early Anglo-Saxon artefacts has been appreciated for several years now. Such analyses add, for instance, to the direct observations of early Anglo-Saxon metalworking practice that can be made, and have a contribution to make to attempts to construct absolute and relative chronologies. Two ranges of alloys in particular have been profitably studied: alloys predominantly of gold, of the late sixth and seventh centuries, in which a progressive decline in the gold content allows dating estimates to be made on the strength of the results of metallurgical analysis (Hawkes, Merrick and Metcalf 1966; cf. Brown and Schweizer 1973 for the application of such results), and the predominantly copper alloys that are characteristic of the diverse and plentiful range of artefacts—particularly dress-jewellery—found in Anglo-Saxon graves of the Migration Period, dating from the fifth century to some point in the second half of the sixth. Study of these copper alloys has been organized in terms of particular artefact-types—for instance studies by Peter Northover and Tania Dickinson of saucer brooches and by Catherine Mortimer of cruciform brooches (Mortimer 1990: the unpublished results of Northover and Dickinson's earlier work are reported in this thesis)—and in the form of comprehensive surveys of the material recovered from individual cemeteries, such as Spong Hill, Norfolk (Wardley in Hills, Penn and Rickett 1984, 38–40), Watchfield, Oxfordshire, and Lechlade, Gloucestershire (Mortimer, Pollard and Scull 1986; Mortimer 1988).

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