Early Anglo-Saxon Belt Buckles (late 5th to early 8th centuries A.D.): Their classification and context

Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries

“…As with beads, Marzinzik's buckle typology is based on continental chronologies, and Hines and Bayliss (2013: 332) agree that this relative sequence is plausible. They suggested that their rst phase, BU2-d/BU2-h ( 505-64), is followed by, second, BU3-a, BU3-g with BU3-c ( 480-570), then third BU3-c, BU3-h, BU4-b and BU4-c ( 570-650) followed by, fourth, BU3-d plus BU3-i ( 610-80) and fth and nally BU3-f ( 635-710), presenting ve abutting phases, a similar but simpler version of Marzinzik (2003). Buckles are less common in female graves of the seventh century (Owen-Crocker, 2004: 143; Walton Rogers, 2007: 187-9).…”

“…Early Anglo-Saxon artefact typologies often include a mixture of local comparison, comparison with continental equivalents where coin-dating evidence might be available, and/or art-historical methods which are used particularly for the presence of Salin style I animal art, or the emergence of Salin Style II, which occurred around 560-70 (Lucy, 2000b: 16-20;Evison, 1987). Some dating systems investigate single artefacts to understand their development and context, for example beads, buckles, shields or spears (Marzinzik, 2003;Brugmann, 2004;Dickinson and Härke, 1992;Swanton, 1973;. Other dating systems investigate the range of objects found in a region, for example Tania Dickinson's (1976) study of the Thames Valley or Martin Welch's (1983) investigation of Sussex.…”

“…Another good point of crossover between the typology system and radiocarbon-dating system are buckles, which are found in male and Downloaded from manchesterhive.com © Copyright protected it is illegal to copy or distribute this document female graves, with some gender differentiation according to type, in particular Sonja Marzinzik's (2003) typology. This is more complex than Hines and Bayliss' (2013) dating system for buckles, but these two approaches complement each other well.…”

“…Evison (1955), Chadwick Hawkes and Dunning (1961) and Geake (1994) all contributed to a patchy framework based on the presence of Salin type I and II animal art. However, the most comprehensive study is that of Marzinzik (2003), who started by dividing the buckles into groups with and without back plates. Subgroups were then based on the shape of elements which made up the buckle, and included the plate, tongue and decoration on the loop.…”

“…A. C. Hogarth classi ed these structural features as integral to a grave and also identi ed external features such as postholes, ring ditches, curb slots or square ditches which are seen more widely across England. He considered that integral features should be regarded as later-seventh-century, although many examples, like grave 108 from Finglesham found with a ledge, are best dated to the rst half of the seventh century, in the case of 108 because it contained a Marzinzik II.19b buckle (Marzinzik, 2003). The recent revised chronology of the mid-sixth and seventh-century graves simpli ed Marzinzik's typology and places many objects previously believed to be later into an earlier date range (Hines and Bayliss, 2013).…”