EARLY MEDIEVAL SWORD

1000

Late Saxon (Anglo-Scandinavian) copper alloy sword pommel, 48mm long, 61mm wide and 17mm thick. Very corroded. Weighs 64.45g. Hollow-cast openwork 'Brazil-nut' form. Centrally placed damaged sub-rectangular hole at base and at apex to accommodate the tang, the upper one with a triangular secondary repair on one face. Both faces of the object are slightly curved with many small irregular perforations of differing sizes within the remains of faint Ringerike style ribbon decoration. The narrow sides are undecorated.The pommel is probably a late development of Petersen's (1919: figs. 124-129) type X, transitional to medieval forms. Copper-alloy pommels with this basic shape are rare but not unknown in Viking Age Europe; there is a reasonably close example from Lough Derg, County Tipperary (in the National Museum of Ireland; Peirce 2002: 140-141) and another from Chetwynd Aston and Woodcote, Shropshire, recorded on the PAS database (HESH-920B71). Although neither of these pommels have complex decoration, the symmetrical Ringerike-style engraving is very like that commonly found on stirrup-strap mounts of the 11th century (Williams 1997: 26-34). Petersen's type X is normally dated to the 10th to 11th centuries, and the decoration places this particular example in the 11th century.