Square-headed brooch

This gilded silver Anglo-Saxon brooch is of a type archaeologists call 'great square-headed brooches'. The cast decoration shows strong influence from Scandinavian art, but it was made in southern England in the early 500s. It was with the skeleton of a young woman in a grave in a Saxon burial ground, discovered during gravel digging in Mitcham (London Borough of Merton) before the World War I. The brooch was lying on her clavicle (collar bone). The wearer would have used it to fasten her cloak at the shoulder. It is the finest item of jewellery from the site so the woman was clearly someone of wealth and high status.