File:Treasure case 2011 T61, Anglo-Saxon silver gilt mount from Great and Little Chishill, Cambridgeshire (FindID 427889).jpg

English: Description: An incomplete, heavily ornamented early Anglo-Saxon scabbard mouth mount made from thick cast gilded silver with niello inlay. About half is missing; the mount originally would have had four rectangular panels. Originally there was a central long rectangular upper or central panel (Panel 1) with a long rectangular lower panel (or 'apron') projecting downwards from one of its long edges (Panel 2), and two 'high' rectangular side panels projecting outwards from its short edges. The side panels (or 'tabs') were curved to fit around the edges of the scabbard (Panels 3 and the missing 4) and the long rectangular panels would have decorated the front of the scabbard.

About half of both Panels 1 and 2 are now missing, together with one of the side panels (Panel 4); the missing part is on the right as you look at it. The remaining left-hand side decorative panel (Panel 3) is complete, but the tab appears to have been broken at the junction with a further decorative element or panel. All of the breaks are fresh.

Each panel is surrounded by a raised border with inlaid niello decoration. Panel 1's border has punched triangles containing niello; the niello has also been run behind the triangles to leave a reserved zig-zag of gilded silver in the centre. This pattern continues around all of the surviving edge of Panel 1. Panel 2 has a simple groove running around its two surviving edges. The gilding appears to run beneath the niello, but in places has been rubbed off.

There is a step between Panel 1 and Panel 3. Panel 3 has upper and lower borders with the same niello-inlaid triangles producing the same zig-zag effect as around Panel 1. The side border, however, is narrower and slightly flatter, and gives the impression of being an internal division between two decorative fields, one now missing. There is a gilded edge beyond this border which is probably the remains of a grooved inner border to the missing panel; although the break is extremely neat here, examination under the microscope shows that it is granular and irregular and it is undoubtedly not the original edge.

Within the borders, each panel is filled with cast Style I decoration. The two long rectangular panels, 1 and 2, are of roughly equal width, set one above the other, both bearing deeply cut chip-carved ornament in which single-, double- and triple-stranded curves form components of animals, all executed in Salin's Style I. Each panel is best viewed from a different direction and so the description will take that into account.

Panel 1, the upper panel, is best viewed with the mount upside down, so that Panel 1 is at the bottom. In the centre of the surviving part of this panel is a triangular eye, surrounded by a long triple-strand head frame above and a shorter triple-strand cheek curving below the eye. A single chunky ridge parallel to the short side of the frame is a nose, and the whole forms the right half (from the face's point of view) of a human face. Above and behind the head is a pyramid of uncertain meaning. Below the head is a two-toed foot, its underside aligned parallel to the frame of the panel, and an adjacent triple-stranded curve probably represents a leg or part of the body. Alternatively, the triple strand could form hair, and the leg and foot could be read as the mouth belonging to the face. This is all within an inner gilded frame of a bold ridge; both the frame and all other ridges are V-shaped with sharp pointed tops and are almost unworn, with nearly all the gilding surviving intact.

Panel 2 is best viewed with the mount the right way up, so that Panel 2 is at the bottom of the mount. It shows the left half of a forward-facing anthropomorphic mask, with a curved head frame, triangular eye, flared nose, triple-strand moustache and double-strand tongue clearly depicted. What may be a triangular cheek, at the base of the headframe, extends upwards in a thin ridge towards the eye and downwards as a short triple strand towards the chin. The third corner extends towards the centre of the panel, where a curving triple-strand line (perhaps a continuation of the moustache) is hard to identify. At the end of this is a bird's head in profile, facing the human mask, with an angular head frame, open V-shaped beak, small eye and single curved line beneath the eye. From the back of the head, a short length of triple-stranding, probably the bird's body, runs to the break. There is no inner border around this panel.

The ridges in Panel 2 are similar to those in Panel 1, with the exception of both the headframes, human and bird. These are flat-topped, originally gilded and inlaid with a niello stripe. There is no evidence that any other element was ever inlaid with niello; the ridges are differently made.

Two piercings within this design may be unintentional, the result of miscasting. They occur above and below the bird's beak, and on the reverse a little gilding has spread around them from the front showing that they were present before the gilding took place. A third splash of gilding suggests that there was originally a third perforation, at the back of the bird's headframe below the body.

Panel 3, the curved tab, protrudes from the left-hand side of the upper panel, and the ornament on this is best viewed with the mount held so that Panel 3 is at the bottom. There is a head at the bottom left-hand corner, similar to but smaller than that in Panel 1, with the same straight chunky nose and curved frame to the eye, this time double-stranded. Above is a double-stranded line ending in an upwards curl, perhaps hair or a head-dress. There is a small triangular or pyramidal element above and to one side of the hair or head-dress, again as in Panel 1. A triple-stranded line, perhaps the body, curves from the top left corner towards the chin, but there appears to be some damage (a transverse bash or cut) across this close to the chin where it also meets a right-angled leg which fills the lower left-hand corner. The damage makes it difficult to see whether the leg and/or the body ends in a foot, but this seems likely by comparison with Panel 1.

Panel 3 has an inner border of a bold ridge, with some recent damage and abrasion to the top right-hand corner.

The edges of the mount and the reverse are ungilded, apart from the accidental splashes mentioned above. Under the microscope two tiny circular spots of iron corrosion can be seen on the reverse (ringed in red on the image), about 0.8mm in diameter, the lower of which appears to have expanded slightly and caused some cracking. These spots do not appear on the front, however, so may be caused by adjacent iron in the ground rather than iron passing through the object.

Dimensions: Depth (along the short edges of the main rectangular panels) 26.7mm. Width 17.5mm. Thickness of silver 2.6mm maximum. Weight: 5.42g.

Analysis: Non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface of a mercury gilt fragment of a mount from Great and Little Chishill, Cambs, indicated a silver content of approximately 89%, the rest being copper and tin. The black inlay is niello of the silver sulphide type. Analysis carried out by the British Museum's Department of Conservation and Scientific Research (File No. 7492 41), 4^th April 2012.

Discussion: This mount is from the mouth of a sword-scabbard. The surviving fragment retains part of a side tab, which would be mirrored on the other side. These would have wrapped around the top of the scabbard and both would probably have had undecorated ends, perhaps covered in leather to help secure the mount to the scabbard. The presence of possible iron pins may suggest that this was another way of fixing the mount to the leather.

It joins a small corpus of Style I-decorated scabbard mouthpieces with expanded front panels, mostly from southern and western (Saxon material-culture) areas of England. Tania Dickinson has recently compiled a list of English finds, including Alfriston grave 89, Selmeston grave 1, Chessell Down grave 51, Pewsey grave 22, and Baginton (2009, 9 and note 31). Esther Cameron dates this group of five mouth-mounts (her Pewsey type) to the late fifth century (2000, 41), but other authors (Welch 1983, 120; Hawkes and Page 1967, 17) prefer a slightly later date, in the early or mid sixth century. Menghin sets this group (his Högom-Selmeston group) in a European context, illustrating closely related examples from Felpéc in Hungary, Högom in Sweden and Snartemo grave 5 in Norway, and again suggests a date very late in the 5th or the first half of the sixth century (1983, 96 and 334).

This group of scabbard mouthpieces tends to have geometric decoration above a projecting panel of Style I, but BH-A99B35 is slightly different to the norm, with several panels of Style II and no geometric decoration or ribbing. Other scabbard mouthpieces which have been allocated to Menghin's Högom-Selmeston group (e.g. Alfriston 89, Férébrianges in France, Skjoldelev in Denmark) differ more distinctly, with no projecting panel.

Tania Dickinson has examined the object and confirmed its identification, and has commented that the Style I is thoroughly English.

Date: This object can be broadly dated by its Style I art, which was certainly in use in England by 500 AD and may have continued in use to the end of the sixth century. The most likely date-range taking everything into consideration is late 5th or early 6th century, 480-550 AD.

References

Annable, F. K. and Eagles, B., 2010. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Blacknall Field, Pewsey, Wiltshire

Cameron, E., 2000. Sheaths and Scabbards in England 400-1100 (British Archaeological Reports 301)

Dickinson, T. 2009. 'Medium and message in Anglo-Saxon animal art: some observations on the contexts of Salin's Style I in England', in S. Crawford and H. Hamerow with L. Webster (eds.), Form and Order in the Anglo-Saxon World, AD 600-1100, 1-12 (being Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 16).

Hawkes, S. and Page, R., 1967. 'Swords and runes in south-east England' Antiquaries Journal 47, 1-26.

Menghin, W., 1983. Das Schwert im Frühen Mittelalter.