File:Anglo-Saxon pin head (FindID 63180).jpg

English: An Anglo-Saxon pin head. The fragment measures 34mm in length, 19mm in width and weighs 2.4g. The fragment is of silver with gilding restricted to the front of the decorated head. The head is flat and shield-shaped with a scalloped top and sits on a hipped and collared shaft. The shaft measures 18mm in length. The decoration of the pin is incised and shows a backward-turning bird, probably to be identified as an eagle on account of its curved beak. The top of its head and the tips of the two upright wings and of the tail, all three ending in scrolls, are cleverly exploited to produce a neat scalloped shaped top to the pin head. The body of the bird is divided into discrete fields.

The head has an eye with a detailed pupil set in a lentoid field, reminiscent of the animal head stone carvings from Monkwearmouth and Lastingham and the birds of the on the cross-shaft fragment from Croft on Tees. The breast of the bird is decorated with dots, whilst the wings and tail are incised with lines. An additional oval panel marks the underside of the wing, detailed with lunette shapes. The birds from Croft on Tees furnish a good example of this detail. The upright wings with scroll endings are found on the Witham pin set and on Anglo-Saxon coins of the eighth century, which also furnish examples of the splayed out feet and backward looking birds.

The elegant zoomorphic design of the pin head, which cleverly dictates its shape, finds parallels in other pins of the eighth and early ninth centuries such as those from Brandon, Flixborough and York.