EARLY MEDIEVAL PENDANT

625

Gold necklace pendant containing Roman mosaic glass inlay. The pendant's gold frame is carefully shaped to fit around the margins of a setting containing an irregular fragment of Roman mosaic glass. A single collar of beaded wire frames the setting allowing the edges of the gold sheet back-plate to be seen. The pendant has a suspension loop made from swaged sheet. This pendant, along with another similar example (KENT-965884) and a gold spacer bead (KENT-7009B3) would have been strung on a high status necklace of mid 7th century AD date. Similar pendants were found in grave 172 in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sibertswold, Kent. X-ray fluorescence analysis of this pendant indicates a composition of approximately 60% gold, 37% silver.Discussion: The pendants belong to a rapidly expanding group of elements belonging to high status necklaces which became fashionable during the seventh century. The necklaces were strung with a variety of pendants, often containing contemporary garnet cabochons, but also earlier, fifth century, cut stones and late Roman millefiori or mosaic glass like the examples from the North Downs. Each of the North Downs pendants would have been flanked by gold biconical spacer beads and together with several more similar pendants would have made up a high status neckIace comparable to those found at Desborough, Northamptonshire (Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse, 'The Making of England, Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600-900', 1991, Cat. No.13) or Sarre, Kent, whose centrepiece is a pendant mounted with a magnificent fragment of millefiori glass (Ronald Jessup, 'Anglo-Saxon Jewellery, London 1959, Pl. XXVII). Similar mosaic glass pendants to the North Downs pendants were also found in grave 172, at Sibertswold, Kent, where they were associated with pendants containing inlays of millefiori glass and garnet (Baldwin Brown, 'The Arts in Early England', 4, Saxon Art and Industry in the Pagan Period, London, 1915, Pl. CIII,1c).