Posted on 01/02/2024 8:42:07 AM PST by Red Badger
An object uncovered by archaeologists in Norfolk, England, is “completely unlike” anything else ever discovered, experts said Monday.
The tiny 19.4 mm (o.7 inch) object is a gilded silver relic, adorned with intricate designs appearing to show an animal looking over its shoulder, according to The Telegraph. The piece is believed to be at least 1,200 years old and archaeologists reportedly can’t determine the purpose of the mysterious object.
Detectorists found the piece in a crumpled condition, but it appears to be a round object with shallow sides, making it somewhat dish-shaped. “It was made by someone with a real eye for loveliness,” Dr. Helen Geake, an expert on the television show “Time Team,” told the BBC. “It’s so tiny and yet it was created just as carefully as something like a Bible or piece of jewelry.”
It’s easy to agree with Geake’s assumption. I think it’s always best to go for the Occam’s Razor approach in situations like this: The piece was probably a piece of decorative jewelry used at the time. But the coolest thing is that archaeologists believe the design and development of the piece required gold and mercury imported from Spain at the time, which probably incurred a huge expense.
Just over a thousand years later, no one remembers the object or the person who owned it. And no one will remember the stuff you once owned during your time on Earth either, so stop buying things you don’t need.
Looks like a dragon.
If you look closely you can see the horse’s fetlocks and hooves........
Look real close, you can see that it’s a horse. You can see it has fetlocks at the ends of the legs. The legs of the image are longer than you notice at first glance because the dark part has worn off or corroded.................
Thanks!
If Ms Smythe thinks that object is bizarre or confusing, she does not know much about the jewelry/adornments people wore in that time period-that one looks like a piece of broken jewelry-either the top of a ring or a cloak pin that got broken off the band or the pin part-and the decoration looks like the artist’s stylized representation of a horse-the owner of it probably just gave up trying to find the broken part after awhile...
“It’s a status thimble...”
Lol, excellent...
I have my great-great-grandmother’s sewing thimble. It’s about 175 years old so it has status.
But this one has seniority!
A bottle cap? For Dragonbreath Lager?
Or King Arthur’s Mead?
A jeweler, or metalsmith would have a good understanding of how that could be made.
No, blueunicorn6 is correct. See my previous post for proof.
It’s 2 creatures:
Right side, a dark grey, long (golden, like a crane’s) legged, round bodied bird, with a serpentine neck.
It is attacking the brown (recumbent?) animal on the left side, that is looking back at the bird, as if attempting to bite it’s neck.
The bird’s legs extend from the body, almost parallel to the bottom of the “frame”.
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