File:Late Roman buckle plate (FindID 213713).jpg

English: Early Medieval buckle plate; fragment of cast copper alloy buckle plate with integral buckle frame, which is mostly missing. The plate is probably continental. It dates from the early part of the Early Medieval period, around the 5th or 6th century, and seems to be a direct development of late Roman triangular designs. The plate would have been of sub-triangular shape, with the apex of the triangle broken away and missing. The remaining section flares towards the pin bar, is then indented on both sides and flares out again to two semi-circular lobes at the top of the plate, near the pin bar. Both lobes have an iron rivet still in situ. The buckle frame broadens to a sturdy edge with rust-coloured corrosion around the gap where the pin would have sat, suggesting that the pin was of an iron-rich material. The sides and back edge of the buckle frame are missing. The plate is decorated on the triangular section with punched crescents in a line along both edges, with the convex back of the crescents facing into the middle.

Length 33.9mm, width 20.7mm, thickness 3.9mm, weight 6.66g

Barry Ager of the British Museum notes "in view of the fixed plate, it is most likely to be continental early medieval. I have asked my colleague Sonja Marzinzik for her opinion, too, and she says that, although the plate recalls Anglo-Saxon buckles [excavated] from Dover B, grave 158 and Leighton Buzzard I, grave 13, neither of them has a fixed plate, so they are not really close parallels.

The nearest continental parallels that I can suggest are two fixed-plate buckles from Rittersdorf, Germany, graves 45 and 26, although there are differences in outline (K. Böhner, 1958, Die fränkischen Altertümer des Trierer Landes, part 2, Berlin, Taf. 43, 1-2). They are dated by Böhner to c. 450-600 and appear to derive from late Roman prototypes, which had simpler, triangular plates."