File:Early Medieval, Garnet pendant (FindID 848838).jpg

English: Gold necklace pendant inlaid with a garnet. The pendant is composed of a thin squared back-plate with rounded corners whose contours are closely followed by a frame of heavy beaded wire. This surrounds a square collet made from a strip of gold whose ends overlap beneath/below the suspension loop. The cell holds a square-cut plate garnet whose surface is slightly damaged. The garnet appears to be set over decayed silver foil. The ribbed suspension loop is poorly cut to a point to the back where it is soldered to the back plate. The front of the loop is displaced from its original point of fixing. The back is plain.

Discussion: The Hammerwich pendant belongs to a rapidly expanding group of necklace elements, all made in similar style, which came into fashion in the seventh century. It may originally have been strung with other pendants on a high status necklace, similar to the necklace from Desborough, Northamptonshire, which was strung with eight cabochon garnet pendants of varying shapes and sizes alternative with gold bullae and separated by gold wire spacer beads (Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse, The Making of England, Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600-900, London 1991, cat. no 13, p. 28). The shape of the pendant and the cut of the stone are however unusual: generally such pendants contain cabochon or facetted stones in a variety of shapes in which irregular ovals predominate. However, a recent find of a rectangular pendant cointaing a plate garnet comes from Stainton, Middlesborough (Treasure Annual Report 2002, no. 42), while the Desborough necklace (above) has a single square pendant, but with a facetted stone. A further find from Sharnford, Leicestershire (unpublished, P&E 2003T364) contains a part of a cabochon garnet bar in a dog-tooth setting, suggesting that goldsmiths in the seventh century mounted a variety of garnet cuts and shapes for necklace pendants without recutting or polishing.

Dimensions: Width: 12 mm. Height: 13.5 mm.

Note: The pendant is Anglo-Saxon and is made of gold. It thus fulfills the criteria of the Treasure Act.

Angela Care Evans
Curator, Anglo-Saxon Collections
Department of Prehistory and Europe
British Museum