File:Early medieval gilded silver pin, detail of front (FindID 437961).jpg

English: Early-Medieval gilded silver pin head. It is flat and oval, and has a central sunken field with chip-carved counter-relief decoration, partly obscured by a very even coating of dark brown/orange iron corrosion, identified by Raman spectroscopy as goethite (see report below).

The counter-relief decoration consists of a broad raised central stem running upwards from the reserved border at the junction of the head and shaft. The stem is decorated with dots made by a triangular punchmark, and has two pairs of undecorated branching stems emerging from each side, one pair above the other. Each stem bends downwards to each end in three pointed-oval or drop-shaped leaves which fill the spaces under the curling stems. Each leaf has a sunken centre filled with diagonal ridges.

The central stem then continues to the end of the object and appears to end in a blunt rectilinear top, but in fact runs under the iron corrosion and is obscured. It is likely that it merges into a raised border around the edge of the pin head,. A further pair of three smaller oval leaves is partly obscured at the top, and then two further stems project inwards from the border, between the middle and lower pairs of leaves, running behind the middle pair of leaves in a straight line at a forty-five degree angle back towards the top and centre of the object to end in single oval leaves.

There are extensive patches of gilding, on the central stem, the raised border where visible, and on the leaves. There are some small sunken areas, not filled by the iron corrosion, which are deeply chip-carved and gilded. The gilding does not appear to extend onto the circular-section shaft, which is incomplete, with a fairly fresh break or crude cut showing bright silver. The break or cut appears to have happened at a bend.

The reverse is ungilded, and also has irregular patches of the iron corrosion.

The pin is 29mm long, 17mm wide and 1mm thick; it weighs 1.88g.

The plant ornament is a 'tree of life' motif, which had a long life. It is similar to the tree-of-life motif on the reverse of the late 9th-century Alfred Jewel, which also has a central stem with branching curling stems ending in leaves. The ninth-century Winchester reliquary is decorated with similar branching stems ending in three-lobed leaves or fruit (Hinton et al 1981). Stems ending in groups of three oval motifs are more usually seen as vine-scrolls ending in fruit, and this motif is common through the eighth and ninth centuries, but the diagonal ribbing seems here more likely to represent veined leaves. The reserved central stem with a single line of dotted decoration can be paralleled on the late eighth-century Witham linked pins (Webster and Backhouse (eds) 1991, no. 184) and the diagonal ribbed decoration can be paralleled on the middle Anglo-Saxon bird-shaped pinhead NMS-9F8257. A ninth-century date for this pin is likely.

There was originally some uncertainty as to whether the brown/orange material might be an inlay or from adjacent iron corrosion, or both. Some parts look very much more like enamel inlay (they are flatter and smoother, and run around the ornament; although admittedly there appears to be gilding beneath it) and other parts (at the top and on the reverse) are browner and lumpier, obscure the ornament and look more like iron corrosion.

Analysis at the British Museum was undertaken in order to identify this brown/orange material. The report below is by Susan La Niece and Janet Ambers, File No. 7474 77, 5^th October, 2011.

"Non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface of a mercury gilt pin-head from Glentham Cliff, Lincolnshire, indicated a silver content of approximately 93%, the rest being copper with about 1% lead. The major element present in the brown material in the recesses of the design was identified by XRF as iron. Raman spectroscopy identified the main component as goethite (FeO(OH)). Goethite is a natural corrosion product of iron and a constituent of iron pan. Although the deposit on the front of the pin head has the appearance of an inlay, goethite has not been reported in inlay materials on silver. Its presence on the back of the pin head is clearly not deliberate so it is unlikely to be deliberately applied on the front. The pin head weighs 1.88 grams."