File:Anthropomorphic mount (FindID 50071).jpg

English: Copper alloy mount in the form of a schematised man's head, cast half round and facing front. The face is long, with a pointed chin, and shows the hair combed straight back in the form of a semicircular 'cap'.

The forehead projects slightly on either side, and the eyebrows cut horizontally across the head to a prominent, rectangular nose, beneath which a moustache is simply represented by a straight, moulded rib with rounded ends. The eyes and mouth are not indicated in any way.
The back is hollow, with a hole for a metal peg at the top and another near the bottom for attachment to some other object now lost.
The head may be closely compared with a series of at least five broadly similar, stylised masculine heads found in recent excavations at Gudme, Fyn, Denmark, which are provisionally dated to the 5th century. One of them has pierced tabs at top and bottom for attachment to another object. Also a silver head was found in house VII at this site (P.Ostergaard Sorensen, 1994, "Gudmehallerne. Kongeligt byggeri fra jernaldern", Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark, 1994, 25-39, fig. 15). A more naturalistic male bronze head (33mm high) from Sohold, Lolland is probably of similar date. Like the Tallington find, it is hollow and it has two pegs for attachment to a staff, which crumbled to dust after discovery (M.B. Mackeprang, 1935, "Menschendarstellungen aus der Eisenzeit Danemarks", Acta Archaeologica, 6, 228-249, Abb.23), so it is possible that the new find served a similar ornamental purpose.
There are slightly later heads, of similar kite shape to the Tallington find, reported from English findspots too. Once from South Yorkshire is of gilded silver with the hair combed straight back, a moustache and a long beard, while another from Cambridgeshire, of gilded copper alloy, is more stylised and closer to the Tallington find in appearence (N.Mills, 2001, Saxon and Viking Artefacts, Witham, p.67, nos. AS155-156).
A bearded and moustachioed head with a hollow back, which may also be of early saxon date, is illustrated, without provenance, in "The Searcher for November 2002", on p.17. The English heads are presumably locally made counterparts of the Danish series. They can probably be assigned to the late 5th - 6th century by comparison with the extreme stylisation and straight hair of the male heads shown on some more or less contemporary Anglo-Saxon saucer and button brooches, although the treatment of the facial features is rather different; e.g. the early 6th century saucer brooch from Aston Remenham, Bucks (T.M. Dickinson, 1993, "Early Anglo-Saxon saucer brooches: a preliminary overview", Anglo-Saxon studies in Archaeology and History, 6, 11-44, fig. 28, 33); and button brooches of class B Miscellaneous from Chatham Lines, Kent, and Harnham Hill, Hants (R.Avent & V.I.Evison, 1982, "Anglo-Saxon button brooches", Archaeologia, 107, 77-124, pl.15: 9.2 and 16.1). The heads perhaps represent Woden, the masked God, but as yet, there is no certain supporting evidence for a specific identification. A small, bronze, early Anglo-Saxon head with a stylised face and a moulded rib for a moustache, but cast in the round with an extraordinary solar or lunar(?) disc set on edge on top and with a cylindrical neck was submitted to the British Museum (c.1984-5), but was reclaimed by the finder before the proper details could be recorded.

These heads appear to be related to a number of copper-alloy male figurines datable to the 5th-6th centuries, e.g. from Fyn and Norway, with the hair typically combed straight, and with or without moustaches or beards. They may have been votive figures, or, in some cases, representations of pagan gods imitating Roman statuettes (Mackeprang, op.cit., figs.7-15).