File:Early Medieval gold mount - front (FindID 467512).jpg

English: A gold mount of Early Medieval date found during controlled archaeological excavations at Bamburgh Castle.

Description: The mount is flat and semicircular. It is made from a flat gold backplate to which are soldered wires to make a filigree design. Around the edge is a beaded wire, the beads c. 0.4mm in diameter; they vary in their neatness, some being neatly made but many having a distinct groove or medial seam around the 'equator' of the beads, where the pressure on the swage (the tool used) has not been enough to close the two halves formed by the tool (Whitfield 1998, 63 and fig. 3b; Whitfield 2004, 131).

There is also an inner border of two loose twists each of two plain wires, set together to form a herringbone pattern. The inner field is decorated with four scrolls of fine beaded wire c. 0.2mm in diameter, each scroll a reversed S shape with tightly spiralled terminals and long, slightly curving centres. Damage to the object can be found near the left-hand corner (if the object is held with the straight edge downwards), where the base plate has torn and folded, with loss or damage to the filigree of two of the scrolls. The scrolls are not arranged in any symmetrical order, but extend upwards and outwards approximately from the right-hand corner.

Date: The filigree strands and tightly spiralled terminals suggest a date in the 8th or 9th centuries and a possible Irish origin. Further study by Dr Niamh Whitfield is planned for the post-excavation stage of the Bamburgh project.