Copper-alloy buckle and plate

Bronze buckle and plate, length 5 cm. Compressed oval loop with decorative grooving on either side of tongue tip, case in one piece with long openwork plate. Back of tongue folded through hole at upper centre of plate, tongue has slight moulding near base decorated with diagonal grooved cross. Plate has groups of diagonal notches down straight sides, inside which are single border grooves. Decorated with two openwork crosses, between which a pair of in-facing open triangles and at end another pair of in-facing triangles side-by-side. At ends the plate has a pair of projecting features apparently schematised boar's-heads. The whole unperforated surface of plate and animal heads covered with tiny punched ring-and-dot ornament. Rivets with rounded heads at top corners and one at centre base: these project behind 1.5mm and are then tapped over. Clearly this plate was set direct onto the leather belt, whose thickness it betrays, and the belt was presumably coloured or gilded to show through the openwork bronze like stone settings. Parallels: M 6508, Sibertswold grave 150 is very like indeed, though larger. M 6266, Kingston Down grave 300 is another and finer eg. with more life-like boar's heads.