Description

Summary: 1 bronze penannular brooch from All Cannings Cross, All Cannings, Wiltshire.

Research results

A Copper alloy penannular brooch from All Cannings Cross, Wiltshire. Although not found during Maud Cunnington's excavation of the Early Iron Age settlement, the brooch is of an early Iron Age type, and so may have been contemporary.

This brooch was examined by Anna Booth (2015) as part of her PhD on penannular brooches in Britain. This study compiled an updated corpus of brooches and was able to identify a number of new types and regional practices. Booth idenifies concentrations of penannulars in South-Western England and East Yorkshire, with her type F being local to Wiltshire and in particular the Avon valley. Penannulars first develop in the early Iron Age, but their use and variety of forms expanded rapisly in the first century AD, and unlike other Brooch forms do not decline in use in the third century, and rather become more popular extending into the fourth century, perhaps as deliberately selected as a "British" accessory in the context of increasingly regional dress styles in the late Roman period.