Description

Summary: 1 small bronze penannular brooch with long pin, from Cold Kitchen Hill, Brixton Deverill, Wiltshire.

Research results

A copper alloy penannular brooch from Cold Kitchen Hill, Brixton Deverill, a surface find during excavations in 1911. Penannular brooches such as this were produced during the Iron Age and then throughout the Romano-British period, but those of this form were most common in the first and early fourth century.

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.