VM_365 Day 142 Anglo Saxon bronze casket handle from Sarre

Bronze casket handle from Anglo-Saxon grave at Sarre
Bronze casket handle from Anglo-Saxon grave at Sarre

The image for Day 142 of VM_365 is of a bronze handle, which may have been attached to a casket placed in a grave at the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sarre. The small amount of intact bone that remained in the grave (G. 286) suggested that it contained an adult. Other finds associated with the burial were small muticoloured glass beads  in a range of sizes that probably once formed a necklace.

The handle shown in the image is made from a bar which is rectangular in section along most of its length, but at either end has been bent, beaten and filed to form hooks with a more rounded section. The hooks terminate with blunt points at the end of each of the sinuous loops. The hooked ends  would have passed under two loops fixed to whatever object it was attached to, allowing it to be carried by the main bar of the handle.

 

The handle was found  along with Iron objects and other copper alloy items including the bronze key that was shown in VM_365 Day 35, leading the excavator Dr. David Perkins to suggest that the various objects might have been fittings associated with a casket.  The handle would have been mounted on the top, with a lock plate like the one shown in VM_365 Day 51 mounted on the side, perhaps operated with the key that was in the grave.

The image below shows a reproduction of a Viking Era casket which may be similar to the one in the grave at Sarre:

https://jorvikingi.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/dsc_0021.jpg
Reproduction (Viking era) casket with similar handle structure. Source: https://jorvikingi.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/dsc_0021.jpg

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