Annular brooch in the context of the late mediaeval costume and worldview
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-03-30

This paper focuses on a 13th-century silver annular brooch discovered in the archaeological excavations in a grave buried adjacent to the foundation wall of the Templar church in Gora, Central Croatia. The brooch bears a partly deciphered inscription meant to protect the woman who wore it.
Apart from their function as a type of jewellery, annular brooches served another specific function in the context of the costume – they were used to fasten the two ends of a shirt collar together below the neck, or to fasten a cloak. As regards the function of any given specimen, our guess depends primarily on its size, which has been further corroborated by an experiment recently carried out in Croatia.
In that sense, the annular brooch from Gora will be placed in the context of the costume complex. We shall also contextualize it within the process of changes in the fashion that brought about this type of outfit in the first place, which spread from Byzantium in the 12th century to countries in Western Europe, and subsequently also throughout Europe, reaching also the Near East with the Crusaders. Annular brooches remained in use until the 15th century, reaching the heyday of popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries.
By virtue of its features and position in the context of the costume of the time, annular brooch soon became one of the dominant carriers of symbolic messages. This comes most to the fore in the case of the specimens bearing an inscription, like the one from Gora. Based on historical and illustrative sources as well as archaeological sites, the paper will show the correlation between the types of material used for making the brooches, types of decoration, production techniques and inscriptions on them on the one hand, and the quality of costume items they fastened, that is, in the last consequence, the social position of their wearers.

Author - Dr. Belaj, Juraj, Institute of Archaeology, Zagreb, Croatia (Presenting author)