Norfolk Heritage Explorer

Our chosen find this month is a middle to late Saxon copper-alloy bow brooch. It was found recently on farmland in Breckland and is notable because of its size, richly cast decoration, and excellent level of preservation. It never ceases to amaze that an object can spend well over a 1000 years in the ground, be subjected to the vagaries of the weather, chemical fertilizers and ploughing and still survive in relatively good condition. Not so for the iron spring and pin mechanism though, as the rusty concretion on the back bears witness to the original location. Iron corrodes much more readily than copper alloy in the ground. 

The date of the brooch is circa AD 800-910 and it is of a brooch form now described as Ansate. The term Ansate means ‘handle-shaped’ and it is clear how the brooch style got it's name.  The adjacent distribution map uses national data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database and illustrates that the type was particularly popular in Anglo Saxon East Anglia. Full details of the brooch can be found at https://finds.org.uk/database  using the reference NMS-EB5046 in the search field.

Our chosen find this month was found on the Suffolk border and is a type of Saxon brooch that has a growing population on the Portable Antiquities Scheme Database.  

The number of these brooches recorded by the scheme and the identification and recording team at Gressenhall is now approaching 90. These brooches are found as far away as the Welsh border, but interestingly the distribution is proving to be very much centred on East Anglia. 

January's Find of the Month is one that if found by most people would be rejected and probably consigned to the recycling bin. It is only after a very close inspection that the nature of the object changes quite dramatically. On the face of it, it is nothing but a corroded and bent sheet of lead, but in a raking light a row of straight-line intersecting characters are just discernible incised into the surface. To a trained eye this is recognisable as a runic inscription, a form of early alphabet used before the adoption of the Latin alphabet.  The word Rune means 'mystery' or 'secret' in Old Germanic languages and runes played an important role in ritual and magic, with ancient inscriptions being found across Europe and Scandinavia.

The inscription on this pierced lead sheet can only be partially made out and there are a number of possible interpretations of the meaning.  Dr Gaby Waxenberger of the Runes Research centre in Munich has evaluated the object and believes it was probably intended as a charm to ward off fever or some other disease and dates to circa 700-800 AD in the Middle Saxon culture.

The inscribing of lead is not restricted to the Saxons, the practice was also commonplace during the Roman period with a good deal of inscribed lead being found at the sacred springs in Roman Bath.  

So if you happen to find a piece of folded lead look at it closely before disposal, it may just be a message from centuries past.

The artefact was found in a cultivated field not far from Fakenham. Full details can be seen at www.finds.org.uk using find reference NMS-63179C.

Think of the range of saucepans, tupperware, washing-up bowls, cardboard boxes, plastic buckets and tins as well as plates, mugs and serving dishes which we use today. In the past, pottery vessels fulfilled many of these domestic and industrial functions, so the remains of these containers can be found almost anywhere. Although pots break into pieces very easily, the individual sherds survive well in the ground and the quantity, type and date of pottery from a site can tell us a lot about how the site was used in the past. Other containers made of wood or leather rarely survive in the archaeological record.

This is a rim sherd of a Late Saxon Thetford-type ware storage jar with the stump of a strap handle, stamped decoration on the upper edge, an impressed wavy line on the exterior, and clay added to the interior, the top and the exterior. The original diameter of the vessel would have been about 290mm. Pots like this were made in Thetford, Ipswich and Norwich between about 850 and 1100.