page_title: Anglo-Saxon brooches
section_title: Supporting-arm
hierarchical_section_title: Anglo-Saxon brooches / Early Anglo-Saxon brooches / Long brooches / Supporting-arm
caption_attribution_description: English: Incomplete Early Medieval supporting arm brooch made from copper alloy. The brooch has a pronounced D-shaped bow, which expands out to form a triangular head. The head is sub-triangular in cross section and measures 24.09mm across; it is 4.79mm thick at the terminals. There is only one surviving projection on the reverse of the head, and this is very worn. The projections would have held the axis bar for the now-missing pin. The bow has a sub-rectangular cross-section. It is 3.16mm thick, 9.84mm wide at the base of the head, tapering to 4.88mm at the foot. The foot is rectangular, with a complete, curled-over catchplate on the reverse. The brooch is decorated with geometric designs, with three transverse grooves across the head, and a further two grooves at the base of the bow. The brooch is particularly worn on the upper surface of the bow, making it unclear if this element of the brooch was decorated. It has a dull, dark black-green patina. The total length is 34.54mm long, and it is 24.09mm wide and 12.39mm thick. Böhme (1974) divided the form into two sub-types based on the width of the head; his work was summarised in English by Evison (1977). This brooch falls between Böhme's Typ Mahndorf (head width 25-30mm) and his Typ Perlberg (head width 12-22mm) but its narrow foot perhaps suggests that it is closer to the latter type. Supporting-arm brooches appear to date from the mid 5th century.
context_page_description: Anglo-Saxon brooches are a large group of decorative brooches found in England from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. In the early Anglo-Saxon era, there were two main categories of brooch: the long brooch and the circular brooch. The long brooch category includes cruciform, square-headed, radiate-headed, and small-long brooch brooches. The long brooches went out of fashion by the end of the sixth century.
  The circular brooch form developed from jewelled disc brooches produced in Kent in the early sixth century. In the early Anglo-Saxon era, the circular brooch type included the saucer, the applied saucer, the button, the annular, the penannular, and the quoit brooches. The circular was the most common brooch form during the middle to late Anglo-Saxon era, with the enamelled and non-enamelled circular brooches being the predominant brooch styles.
  There are a few styles that fall into the miscellaneous category. These include the bird and S-shaped brooch of the early Anglo-Saxon era and the safety-pin, strip, ottonian, rectangular, and bird motif of the middle to late Anglo-Saxon era.
context_section_description: The supporting arm brooch is a T-shaped brooch. It dates to the early Anglo-Saxon era, 400 to 450 AD. This brooch style evolved from Roman brooches, but it also displays Germanic characteristics. According to the Portable Antiquities Scheme database, "The ‘supporting arm’ is in fact wings, each with a perforated lug on the reverse to hold the pin bar, around which the spring is wrapped. There can be a third or even a fourth perforated lug in the centre. The foot is normally short and slightly flared, with transverse grooves and bevelled edges."
caption: Supporting Arm Brooch
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