File:BC8383 Strap end (FindID 109690).jpg

English: A large decorated strap-end of Hawkes and Dunning’s type Va, made from copper alloy. The object consists of two parts. At the end adjacent to the (leather) strap is a thickened trapezoidal extension, which contains a slot and a single rivet for holding the strap. This trapezoidal part is outlined with a pair of borders, each with lines of punching. From the narrower end of this panel proceeds a complex pointed leaf-shaped or long triangular plate, giving an amphora-shaped effect. On both edges of the plate is an animal in profile, with the backs of the animals forming the edges of the plate. The animals are symmetrical; each has its head towards the apex of the strap-end, with a single raised dot eye within a sunken circle. The animals are lying in a ‘couchant’ position, with legs flat along the edge of the central panel. Between the eye and the foreleg of each animal is a circular hole, apparently decorative; these holes conceal or remove part of the jaws, which seem to be closed. The tails each end in a series of lobes giving the strap-end a wavy outline here. The tails, legs, necks and bellies are picked out in bands of parallel nicks.

The central panel echoes the amphora shape of the complete strap-end, with two further decorative circular holes between the narrowest part and the lobes of the animals’ tails. There is a fifth unfinished hole on the left side (as viewed on the image), just adjacent to and below one of the complete holes. None of these holes appear to have been intended to contain rivets.

The central panel is deeply grooved, with wide lines arranged symmetrically, and the terminal is in the form of a a trilobate motif. The reverse is flat and undecorated.

Another strap-end of this type was published in The Searcher (March 2004, p. 13). This strap-end, in common with others (e.g. Hawkes and Dunning nos. 2, from Leicester; 9, from Icklingham in Suffolk; and 10, from Ixworth in Suffolk) has much simpler animals whose noses meet at the tip of the strap-end. The decoration of these strap-ends is very various, however, and includes ring-and-dot motifs, chip-carving and stamping.

Barry Ager comments: “The distribution of strap-ends of this type shows that they are a continental type, found mainly in northern Gaul and the Rhineland/Danube regions. One with a similar ‘leaf’ design is recorded from Samson, Belgium (H.W. Böhme, 1974, ‘Germanische Grabfunde des 4. bis 5. Jahrhunderts zwischen unterer Elbe und Loire’, Munich, Taf. 100, 5). Böhme’s more recent dating of these strap-ends is to around 430-470, which seems perhaps a little late if the English finds arrived here at the end of the Roman period; an import in Roman times suggests rather the early 5th century. But, as one parallel comes from the Liebenau cemetery, it is not entirely impossible that they were alternatively brought here by Anglo-Saxon settlers later in the 5th century.”