Early Medieval Brooch - pins in ireland and britain

Brendan P. Kelly (PhD1)

This research pertains to a corpus study of a type of decorative dress-fastener known as the ’brooch-pin’, which ranges from plain to highly ornate specimens such as the Westness brooch (see Stevenson 1987, 90-5). These were in use in Ireland and parts of Britain between the seventh and tenth centuries AD, if not later. Although never before subject to detailed examination and analysis, brooch-pins are clearly related typologically to iconic annular dress-fasteners such as the Tara and Hunterston brooches. This, therefore, will be the first time that they have been studied as a group. More modest and less ostentatious, brooch-pins would likewise have functioned as symbols of status in the highly stratified hierarchy operating in early medieval Irish society. They are invariably made from a copper-alloy, which is occasionally tinned to give the appearance of silver. Many of the known specimens are inlayed with enamel and occasionally  millefiori, and at least one specimen is decorated with the Christian image of St. Menas between the Beasts. The study of this corpus has the potential of filling, inter alia, a significant gap in our knowledge of 7 ^th century Irish and British metalwork.

Figure 1: Two middle-sized bronze decorated and jewelled brooch pins (after Wilde 1861, 565). 

This research will include analysis of the form, function and date of brooch-pins through the prisms of classification, typology, distribution analysis, chronology and art-historical pedigree, and iconographical analysis where appropriate. At present it is unclear how many brooch-pins are in existence, but an indicative survey of the corpus based on a rapid paper-search suggests that there could be as many as one hundred extant specimens. These objects are held by several prestigious institutions including the National Museum of Ireland, the British Museum, the National Museum of Scotland and the Ulster Museum. Thus, this research will be very much museum-based. The dating of these brooches will be established from the available corpus of excavation reports. In addition, it is expected that art-historical assessment will also contribute to the establishment of their true chronological position and require me to engage with a broad selection of the early medieval Irish and British metalwork. Iconographical study of these brooches will require comprehensive investigation of both Early Christian and secular iconographical schema, and will speak ultimately to the intellectual landscape of their producers and wearers.

In terms of the intellectual principles which frame modern archaeological practice, this research takes as its starting point the post-processual theory of performance which foregrounds the manner in which an object of material culture ’performs’ within various social and historical contexts, and both proclaims and crafts social identities. In essence this theoretical framework allows archaeologists to begin to understand what these objects meant to people and encourages greater consideration of the social context of material.

b.kelly11nuigalway.ie

Figure 2:
Two decorated brooch-pins (after Wilde 1861, 562)