File:Dolphin brooch (back) (FindID 494143).jpg

English: Incomplete cast copper alloy Roman hinged dolphin-type brooch, missing one wing and the hinge and pin, as well as the foot and catchplate. There is a small fragment of the copper alloy spindle visible within the tubular wing. Some of the surface of the wing remains on the outside and retains two sets of parallel transverse incised lines. The head of the brooch has a central raised moulded square which extends vertically down the bow into a lozenge-shape which tapers into a neck and then expands into a rounded terminal. The terminal appears zoomorphic because a chip has been broken off which looks like an eye socket, but there is nothing to match it on the other side. Below the moulded ridge, the bow tapers to a broken edge and the back of the bow is hollow.

Hattatt (2000) illustrates a similar example of a hinged Dolphin-type brooch on page 299, Fig.158, No.361, which is dated to the 1st century AD.

Bayley and Butcher (2004) illustrate a similar Dolphin-type brooch on page 90, Fig.70, No.207, which is unstratified but could only date up to c.AD 200, and a Polden Hill type brooch with a similar 'zoomorphic pellet' on the bow, on page 91, Fig.72, No.213, which dates from c.AD 80-120.