· by trixranderson.bsky.social ·1d ago · view on bsky.app ↗

I've been missing from #FindsFriday for months, so it's probably time I got back into it! To tie in with our new paper, we're going to look at inset weights for the next few weeks - seeing what these enigmatic objects are, where they're found, and their ties to the Great Army. This is weight 1706:

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A photograph of a small, square piece of lead with a highly-decorated piece of silver fixed to the top by a rivet. It is a lead trade weight recovered from the Viking Great Army camp at Aldwark, North Yorkshire

#findsfriday

1 comments — live from bluesky

Trix · 1 · 1d ago

This weight was found at one of our Viking camps - Aldwark, in North Yorkshire - and so the link to the Army is there immediately. Like all of the 'inset' weights, it's a small piece of lead with something set into it: these insets can be pottery, glass, highly decorated - or sometimes just pins.

Trix · 1 · 1d ago

We'll look at *why* Vikings wanted to set little pieces of chopped-up stuff into lead weights in the coming weeks. However, it's fair to say that it's almost certainly related to the trade in hack metal: at the camps, we've recovered weights alongside masses of fragmented silver (and sometimes gold)

Trix · 1 · 1d ago

So, what's the inset in today's weight, No. 1706? It's made of silver, and the diamond shape surrounded by 'palmette' trefoils has rough, uneven edges on all sides, showing it was chopped from the centre of something. The central piercing is original, although it now holds a securing pin...

Trix · 1 · 1d ago

We think this finely-detailed piece of silver has been hacked from the centre of an Anglo-Saxon disc brooch, once a magnificent piece of display jewellery akin to these from Cheddar and from Beeston Tor. Both feature the slightly curved diamond design typical of the Trewhiddle style of A-S artwork

Trix · 2 · 1d ago

At some point, a member of a Viking army chopped apart one of these beautiful brooches - to melt down, or to use the silver fragments as small change - but kept the central piece, pinning it to a lead weight... We try to argue that Vikings weren't barbarians and then they do things like that!

Trix · 3 · 1d ago

If you can't wait to know more, then you can read our new paper on these weights which now available in the latest issue of Internet Archaeology - link below. There is also a full, and completely open-access, catalogue of the known weights so far to be found through the Archaeology Data Service.