Treasure Annual Report 1998-1999 - Portable Antiquities Scheme

Treasure Annual Report 1998 - 1999 29
Early Medieval Artefacts
particularly as no other richly decorated Anglo-Saxon Defence to Suffolk Museums Service for Moyse’s Hall
bridle has yet been found apart from the bridle from Museum, Bury St Edmunds
Sutton Hoo. While occasional finds of ornamental Valuation: £15,000
metalwork that could be horse gear suggest that A C EVANS
decorated bridles may have been less rare than horse
burials with bridles currently suggest, it is possible that
the Lakenheath bridle may have a significance beyond the
context of this modest cemetery. It may be that it
represents a gift or a reward from the dead man’s
overlord for service in his role as a mounted warrior.
The Lakenheath bridle is also important from a
technical point of view because it is the earliest Anglo-
Saxon bridle from a secure context with high status
fittings, fixed mouth pieces on the bit and matching links
on the reins. The rein links alone relate it to the bridle
from mound 17 in the Sutton Hoo cemetery, the bridle
found in grave 47 at Snape and to the remains of the
Great Chesterford bridle. The use of links on the reins
seems to be an almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon feature.
Their origins may lie in the Middle East, where various
devices are used to weight the reins when they are either
resting on the horse’s neck or looped over a saddle hitch.
The use of fixed mouthpieces on the bit seems also to be
a feature of early Anglo-Saxon bridles and it is
interesting that the Lakenheath bit rings are uniquely Dshaped
as opposed to the closed rings of the Sutton Hoo,
Snape and Great Chesterford bridles. However, the
placing of the cruciform mounts on each crossover of the
bridle straps, together with the decorative mounts on the
cheekpieces, brow and headbands (fig.52), show that early
Anglo-Saxon bridles also share styles with horse
equipment on the Continent and in Scandinavia. All
ultimately have a common ancestry in the harness styles
of the Roman Empire (M C Bishop, ‘Cavalry equipment
of the Roman army in the first century AD’, in J C
Coulston (ed.), Military Equipment and the Identity of
Roman Soldiers, Proceedings of the Fourth Roman Military
Equipment Conference, BAR International Series 394,
Oxford, 1988).
Note: See Treasure Annual Report 1997–98, no. 74.
Disposition: An archaeological find, so no reward
payable to the finders. To be donated by Ministry of
(fig. 52) Eriswell (RAF Lakenheath)
53 Eriswell (RAF Lakenheath), Suffolk (2): Anglo-
Saxon grave burials containing five silver
pendants and four silver finger rings
Date: Late 6th to early 7th centuries
Finder: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Unit
Date of discovery: July 1999
Circumstances of discovery: Controlled
archaeological investigation.
Description: The finds have been disclaimed unseen
by the British Museum to become part of the
excavation archive. They are as follows:
Grave no. Find
0146 1085 pendant
0146 1087 pendant
0146 1143 finger ring
0146 1144 finger ring
0242 1487 pendant
0242 1488 pendant
0242 1542 pendant
0313 1708 finger ring
0313 1714 finger ring
Disposition: Suffolk County Council Archaeological
Service.
A C EVANS