EARLY MEDIEVAL HANGING BOWL

600

Early Medieval cast copper alloy bird-shaped hooked mount from a hanging bowl. The body is in the form of an irregular triangle, with two concave sides and one convex side, forming the spread wings and tails of the bird. The three dimensional head extends from the convex edge. The upper surface of the body is decorated with two grooved lines following the outline of the triangle. Each of the three angles of the triangle have a flat circular terminal with a central rivet hole, the two at the end of the 'wings' are empty, whilst the terminal for the 'tail' contains the remains of a rivet. The three dimensional head formed a hooked terminal with damage to the end of the hook/beak. The mount is 32.08mm long and 33.49mm wide. The body is 2.20mm thick. The hooked terminal (head) is 6.48mm wide, 4.10mm thick and 8.79mm deep. It weighs 4.80 grams.Discussion by H Geake: The mount is from a hanging bowl, and is of the bird-shaped type, although this example is in an unusual form. Bird mounts from hanging bowls usually have their wings folded, rather than spread. The closest parallel in terms of shape is perhaps from Sarre in Kent, but it's not very similar in form (Brenan 1991 no. 49, and Bruce-Mitford 2005 no. 44). It's also unusual to have a mount attached by rivets - Rivets are generally thought to be indicative of a relatively late date, post 650 (Bruce-Mitford 2005, p. 17). As if this wasn't enough in terms of being unusual, the method of decoration is also uncommon. The grooves on the body are wide - stand alone incised lines are usually finer; although on inspection no trace of enamel or other inlay could be seen to explain the wider grooves on this example. Punchmarks are not impossible - there are dots on the Hawnby bowl (B-M no. 100, Brenan no. 33 with a very poor drawing) and on the base mounts of the Castle Yard, York bowl (B-M no. 98; Brenan no. 15), but on the York bowl they are on applied silver foils. That appears to be it for stamped decoration on published UK bowls - so it's very rare. On the whole I wonder if its unusual features are due to its being relatively late. There is a series of bowls with riveted mounts of a similar shape to those from Sarre, dated to the 9th or 10th centuries - from Hedeby in Germany (B-M no. 128), Holstad (no. 131), Fana Kirke (no. 133), Mo (no. 137), Litle Eige (no. 146) and Setnes (no. 148), all in Norway - some of these have engraved decoration. A 10th-century find from the River Blackwater in Ireland has punched dots (no. 166).