Description Date: Circa: 5th – 6th Century AD:Note the Victorian 'settlement of the English' narrativisation, so typical of the antiquities market. There are 29 silver pendants from Norfolk in the PAS database, and this is not among them. A silver object, even if part of it was a coin, found by an artefact hunter in Norfolk in the early 2000s should have been reported under the 1996 Treasure Act. If it was not reported (and what about the landowner?), then the finder and first holder had acquired it illegally and did not have legal title to it. In that case, that title cannot have been legally obtained by successive holders, nor by the dealer who currently has it in their stock. As a silver artefact more than 300 years old, found after the implementation of the Treasure Act, this item is (potential) Treasure, and illegally appropriated. Unless he can provide documentation to the contrary, Simon Brown would have a hard time explaining how he has legal title to an undeclared piece of Treasure found on British soil. But then, nobody is going to ask him, are they? To do so would risk spoiling the statistics.
Size: diametre [sic] at 1.6 cm: height to retention loop 2.2 cm: weight at 3.34 grams:
An interesting ancient Roman Denarius coin pendant, which I suspect may be post Roman and perhaps, Anglo-Saxon in creation date: The migration tribes [sic] of Northern Europe were fond of using old Roman coins in this way and the retention loop is similar in design style to others of this period: The item was detected in North-Norfolk in the early 2000’s [sic]: It is thought that some Romano / Iceni may have moved west into the Fens to avoid the Angles, who were migrating across the North Sea from Angeln [modern Schleswig] and settling what would become East Anglia:
Condition: Very fine: unrecognizable Emperor bust facing left – possible soldier advancing to the reverse: Dark grey to silver patination oxide tones: Clasp and retention complete - could be worn today:
That is, of course if it is a real antiquity. Have a look at that loop and the toolmarks on it. Those grooves on it for example, and the way the silver strip is bent. What do those marks come from? Then look at the rough edges of the rivets, why are they like that (and not worn)? Where is there any trace of wear on the loop from use? From the photos offered, this object looks as it would if freshly-made and never worn. The coin is badly worn on both sides, the reverse particularly, and the die axis of the obverse and reverse are at an angle to each other. But the coin is mounted in such a way that neither side is 'up' - which is not how the majority of antique coin pendants look. What evidence is there that this object actually was dug up in the form we see now? The coin is a piece of numismatic scrap, poorly legible, hardly collectable. But who is to say that some metal detectorist bloke in a shed adding some grooves and two holes to a bit of scrap silver strip (about an hour and a half work at most) could not transform an unsaleable numismat into a 'pendant' that some dealer or collector will buy? Is that what Simon Brown has in his stock? The BM would probably be able to tell him what they think, but will they? But here we have a piece of material that is either one thing or another, and as such contaminating the archaeological record with information that may be entirely false. This is the problem with all forms of 'bazaar archaeology'.
As always, caveat emptor.
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