Roman Bronze Brooches Revisited: Zoomorphic Types

 

In a blog post dated August 20 of last year we reviewed some examples of Roman bronze fibulae (brooches), a ubiquitous find both in controlled excavations and by metal detectorists. In this post we’d like to elaborate on the topic, focusing on zoomorphic brooch types.

The example pictured above, a horse brooch dating to the 1st to 3rd Centuries AD, while not unknown, is a very uncommon type. It has been modeled in the round rather than as a flat plate with pin on the reverse. For more details, it may be viewed here: http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i475.html

 Far more typical of Roman brooches depicting mammals is the example above of a so-called “horse and rider” brooch. As is frequently the case, the schematically rendered rider has broken away but the Celtic style horse is well defined and shows a strong sense of movement. This type, dating to the 3rd or 4th Century, may have been closely associated with the Roman army. The bronze has been tinned to resemble silver. For more details on this example, go here: http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i474.html

In addition to mammals (rabbits or hares, dogs, horses, etc.), birds were a popular source of inspiration for Roman craftsmen involved in making brooches. The superb example above, depicting a duck in resting posture with wings folded back, illustrates the use of enamel decoration on Roman brooches. In this case, the wings have a piriform cell containing blue enamel surrounded by red with another stretch of blue enamel around that. In addition, the animal itself is depicted in a highly naturalistic way; even the duck’s eye has been indicated with a tiny point of incision. For more on this example, go here: http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i489.html

An uncommon type of bird brooch, dating to the 2nd or 3rd Century AD, is illustrated above. This example appears to depict a dove or small water bird. Unusually for zoomorphic brooches, it’s original pin and coil are intact. Unlike many zoomorphic types that were also popular on the European continent, this specific type appears to be unique to Roman Britain. More about this example here: http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i476.html

For many more examples of brooches, mainly Roman, of many different types, visit the “Ancient Jewelry and Personal Adornment” section of our website at: http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/c19_p1.html

All the brooches presented above are individual UK metal detector finds, declared not treasure and legally exported.

For further study, we recommend the following sources:

Roman Brooches in Britain, a Technological and Typological Study Based on the Richborough Collection, The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2004

AND

A Visual Catalogue of Richard Hattat’s Ancient Brooches, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2007

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM A BUCKLE?

In a recent blog entry we examined characteristics of a 5^th-6^th Century Frankish cloissone’ silver buckle (http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i163.html), a high status object. In this entry we will examine aspects of some rather more mundane but also much more typical buckles from Late Antiquity and the transitional period involving the migration of peoples into Europe, the end of Roman authority in the west and the consolidation of Roman power in the east (the Byzantine Empire).

A group of 5 Visigoth bronze belt plates on our website (http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i125.html), found in Spain and formerly in both an old Spanish and a California private collection, date to the 5^th and 6^th Centuries. By the early 6^th Century, what is now the Iberian Peninsula was no longer part of the Roman world but largely under the control of the Visigoth Kingdom. The material culture and art of the Visigoths, their close relatives the Ostrogoths and Heruli, and other migratory people who settled in the former European provinces of the Roman Empire, focused on small, finely crafted objects, including jewelry and articles of personal dress. Such objects made from precious metals and adorned with cloissone’, gilding and other high status techniques tend to receive much attention in museum exhibitions and catalogs but these are not typical. Most personal dress items, such as the buckles listed here, were crafted from bronze or iron and decorated with simple incising or chip carving.

Some common iconographic themes among all these objects include bird heads with large beaks, presumably raptors, and quadra pedal animals, usually quite stylized and sometimes nearly impossible to make out amidst a mass of contorted ornamentation. Viewing a close up of our group (http://webhosting.web.com/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://www.clioancientart.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/Products/CA-09-126.JPG&target=tlx_new&title=A%20%20Group%20of%20Visigothic%20Bronze%20Belt%20Plates%20and%20Fragments) the small belt plate in the center is a good example of the large beaked bird motif. The 2 buckle plates on the left clearly portray animals of some type but any specific identification is impossible. The buckle 2^nd from right may include both animal and bird elements but these are far less distinct than on the other plates. A very clear related example of the beaked bird motif may be seen here (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=95393&partId=1&searchText=Byzantine+buckle&images=true&&page=1 ) on 2 mounts with all-over cloisonné garnet inlays in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, dating to the late 4^th-5^th Century, found at Kerch in the Crimea.

Buckles provide a remarkable insight into the transition of the formerly Roman European provinces into the semi-Barbarous states established by the now settled “Migration Period” peoples. In the later days of Roman control in western Europe, specifically the late 4^th and the 5^th Century, very large numbers of officers in the Roman army were of “barbarian” extraction, some rising to very high office. Increasingly, the weapons and objects of personal adornments used by Roman troops and their non-Roman opponents converged in terms of materials, effectiveness and even decorative treatment.  To illustrate the point, a late Roman (4^th-5^th Century) chip carved buckle in the British Museum (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=86295&partId=1&searchText=Roman%20chip%20carved%20buckle) shows a remarkable similarity in its surface treatment, which is chip-carved, to a Germanic, possibly Gepid, chip carved buckle, also in the British Museum (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=85657&partId=1&searchText=Germanic+buckle&images=true&page=1).

This convergence of styles was far less pronounced in the eastern provinces of the Empire – what we now call the Byzantine Empire (though the Byzantines themselves would not have understood this term, as they simply thought of themselves as Romans). A couple of complete belt buckles on our website, cast in the “cross and pelta” style, illustrate this: http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i188.html and http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/i189.html. These show no hint of influence from the migratory cultures that had overrun the west. Their clean and solid lines suggest stability and authority. Far wealthier than the western provinces, and with central authority concentrated at Constantinpolis, the east was able, for the most part, to stay out of the chaotic relationships among the new semi-barbarous European kingdoms, and even to repel onslaughts from other migratory groups in the east, such as the Slavs, Avars, Alans and Huns.