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Polychrome Jewellery in Kent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

Extract

The remarkable garnet-inlaid jewellery from Teutonic graves of the Pagan Period in Kent can be safely recommended as one of the most promising subjects for a research-student that English archaeology has to offer. It is to be hoped that this short introductory study will attract attention to it.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1933

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References

1 It may be possible to show that a few pieces found outside Kent, e.g. the Wintersmoor brooch in Sheffield Museum, are not of Kentish manufacture ; but the rarity of such jewels makes it unnecessary to investigate the matter in an article that is concerned with Kent only.

2 The brooch, so Mr N. Cook informs me, was brought into Maidstone Museum The workman who found it said the stones A similar catastrophe of which almost immediately after its discovery. disappeared when the brooch was washed under a tap. I was a witness suggests to me that these soluble gems are nothing but caked mud.

3 Amber glass occurs once —on a disc-brooch believed to have been found between Wincheap and Thanington, Canterbury (Wacher Coll.). It also occurs on a Style A, I disc-brooch, probably from Faversham, in the Canterbury Museum.

4 It does occur very rarely on buckle-hoops ; but it is geometric work, not the characteristic zoomorphic chip-carving of Style B.

5 And never the powder-blue opaque glass, resembling lapis lazuli, that was commonly used in Style A work.

6 The argument if A=B and B=C, then C=A is dangerous when =means ‘is contemporary with ’. But with the proposition repeated for D, E and F and knowing that B=D=E=F, I think we have to admit that C and A are contemporary.

7 I find that close dating is impossible in Anglo-Saxon archaeology. I hope the reader will be content with ‘second half v ’, ‘about 500’, ‘second half VI ’and so on. The real point of the proposed shift is best explained by abandoning even these vague guides and saying that the change is from ‘Ethelbert Period ’ to ‘Settlement Period ’.

8 I am sorry to say that this statement is not based, as itshould be, on the results of extensive travels. I hope to investigate the niatter personally, but in the meantime I have to thank colleagues abroad for helping me and for their patience with my enquiries. Note that argument based on similarity of ornamental and technical details is only valid when one is dealing as, here, with like things of the same culture; you use it at your risk when comparing, for instance, Anglo-Saxon and Irish material.

9 Dr Åberg (Anglo-Saxons in England, p. 201) is pardonablycautious about this association. But ought one to claim that because in 1792 these and other objectsfigured with them came from ‘ graves ’, therefore we must disbelieve the B.M. register of1862 which says that these objects alone came from one grave ?

10 With regard to the Wieuwerd hoard, I do not see that it affects Kentish chronology in any way. I admit that the pendant with the impaled disc cell-work ought not to be later than mid VI on my reckoning, and we note that this piece is damaged and repaired, so that it was probably already of some age when it was deposited in early VII. The pendant in an inferior A, I style may well be work of late VI ; note the ugly and late form of barrel-loop (cf. Wilton pendant) and the coarse filigree background.

11 Antiquaries Journal, 1933, 18, p.246 Google Scholar

12 Mr Leeds was referring, of course, to the composite brooches only, which I group with the disc-brooches. I maintain solidly that the composite brooches are not a distinct and later class than the disc-brooches. Please compare the inner jewelled rings of PLATE I, 10 and PLATE IV, I.

13 This number includes the imitative (A, 111) Taplow buckle.

14 See footnote p. 442. The Coptic bowls, and presumably the amethysts and cowries, are said to be late in Kent. It is worth while observing that the admittedly inadequate evidence available points the other way, especially as regards the bowls and the beads. One ought not to argue that the bowls were imported in VII and not before, merely because one example, described by the finders as patched and worn, was found in a Sarre grave that we know to be late ; nor does it follow that cowries were not imported before VII simply because outside Kent they occur in late burials. If one enquires abroad one finds the bowls and beads referred to IV-VI in Egypt (why should the Jutes of VII have organized an absurd trade in antiques ?) and even Dr Åberg admits that the cowries had found their way into Europe by mid VI. It does not seem to be generally known that they were circulating long before this. They occur in a Gallo-Roman cemetery at Trion and they are found at Pompeii, for instance. In this country they occur in a Cornish barrow (as Mr Opie has remarked to me) and also in a Hampshire pit-dwelling.

15 The Coptic bowls are inclined to desert Watling Street. Two come from Faversham and one from Teynham, close at hand, but five others (accompanied in four instances by cloisonnd jewellery) were found in the Sarre-Gilton area. We know, of course, that one of the Sarre bowls was found in a grave of VII. It is surprising that the enamelled bowls did not also stray, and one has to deal warily with the distribution of a small number of costly objects. Remember that the Sarre and Gilton cemeteries were in use for over two centuries.

16 This makes the ‘later date’ theory for theKingston type cemetery very difficult to believe. If you say that Kingston (z miles from Bifrons) is different because the Jutes did not get there until some time after the occupation of the valleys, one wonders why pottery bottles and Style B disc-brooches should have been taken up the hill, if so much time had elapsed that square-headed, and radiated, and long brooches had been abandoned as out of fashion. Burial customs, it will be noted, apparently changed dunkg the climb. The Nail Bourne fashionis flat graves ; up at Kingston you have the famous straggling lines of barrows.

17 I reject the ‘Dover’ lobed glass to which Cochet (alone) refers, as I believe the locality is a mistake. Excluding this, there are nine lobed glasses in Kent I, none in Kent 11, and five in the mixed area.

18 Very few existing jewels are British. I think the Dover brooch (PLATE I, 5) is, the Faversham brooch illustrated on PLATE v, the Canterbury Museum pendant, the Forest Gate jewel in the Ashmolean Museum, and a small number of other ornaments, including certain cabochon garnet and filigree pendants.

19 The best general account of cloisonné jewellery, with special reference to the antecedents of the Kentish jewels, is by Mr 0. M. Dalton. It will be found in the introduction to his catalogue (Cambridge, 1912) of the McClean Bequest in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

20 All the styles after the Petrossa period are liable to include ‘ mixed ’ forms of cloisonnk, but in none is this so noticeable as in Style E. For instance, the Wittislingen radiated brooch has panels of a favourite Style C quatrefoil design, the Style E regulation step-pattern, and, in niello on the back, the Cesena (Style B) honeycomb.

21 I agree with Lindqvist in suggesting a date in the neighbourhood of mid VI for the continental jewelled ‘ frozen ring ’ hilts. But has any archaeologist tackled the problem of the scabbard-mount of the sword from Nocera Umbra I ? For this mount, which does not look later than A.D. 500, cf. Veeck, Alamannen, Tf. 31, 9.

22 The multiple-step cloison probably represents the Gourdon period style. It is seen on the Canterbury Museum pendant, where it resembles authentic Gourdon work, on the Forest Gate jewel, and on the Faversham brooch (PLATE v).

23 I think this brooch is an unfinished piece, as the filigree is missing. It is not out of the question that it was intended for enamel.

24 The cemeteries are sufficiently warlike, though not suchobvious burial-places of a warrior folk as Sarre. Sibertswold, for instance, has as many swords as Gilton-Ash. I may say that I regard (temporarily) the bottles in the upland cemeteries as coming from the Kent I cuIlt u re.