{"id":1374,"date":"2015-04-21T15:02:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T15:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/wordpress\/?p=1374"},"modified":"2015-08-27T08:51:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T08:51:00","slug":"15-april-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/2015\/04\/21\/15-april-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"21 April 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"thistle-headed<\/a>

thistle-headed iron pin<\/p><\/div>\n

Along with the evidence for gold, silver,\u00a0leaded bronze and iron\u00a0working, Trusty\u2019s Hill also produced a small but impressive assemblage of\u00a0metal artefacts. The high quality of the ironwork assemblage in particular, especially given the small scale of excavations, is a good indication of the importance of the settlement here around AD 600.<\/p>\n

Two of the metal artefacts really stood out.<\/p>\n

The first was a decorative iron pin, recovered\u00a0from the east side of the summit.\u00a0It is of\u00a0early medieval type and is\u00a0a finely crafted thistle-headed pin. X-rays showed that there were traces of copper alloy inlay within the incised decoration.\u00a0Decorated iron pins are rare, probably due to the difficulty in decorating iron compared to copper alloy or bone\/ antler, which were easier to either cast or carve into intricate shapes. Hammering this small object into such a fine shape, incising the decoration and inlaying the copper alloy required an immense amount of skill as a metalworker and the owner of such an object is likely to have been of a high status. Thistle-headed pins can be paralleled elsewhere in Dumfries and Galloway, in bone from\u00a0Tynron\u00a0Doon\u00a0and in a mould fragment for a copper alloy pin\u00a0from the Mote of Mark. It is the rare choice of material, iron, which makes\u00a0the Trusty’s Hill pin\u00a0particularly special. The only comparably decorated iron pin from Scotland is a drum-headed pin from Howe in Orkney, which has copper alloy inlays on the head and incised decorative bands with inlays around the swollen shank. This form of pin has traditionally been dated on stylistic grounds to no earlier than the seventh century AD, though the Howe pin is from a context dating to between the fourth and seventh centuries AD, suggesting a longer currency.<\/p>\n

The other impressive metal artefact was a circular copper-alloy mount, also recovered from the eastern side of the summit. It is decorated with Germanic style birds’ heads arranged around a central boss, with organic remains preserved on the reverse around three copper-alloy lugs, and\u00a0can be dated\u00a0to the late sixth\u00a0to early seventh century AD on stylistic grounds. X-ray fluorescence\u00a0analysis detected gold and silver on the front of\u00a0this object,\u00a0which was probably from a horse harness.<\/p>\n

These two artefacts corroborate the radiocarbon dating evidence for occupation of the site around AD 600<\/a>, and reveal that the inhabitants of Trusty’s Hill included\u00a0people\u00a0who had\u00a0a considerable\u00a0measure of\u00a0wealth and sophisticated taste for expensive jewellery with which to ornament not just their own personal appearance but their\u00a0horses as well.<\/p>\n

\"copper-alloy<\/a>

copper-alloy horse mount<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with the evidence for gold, silver,\u00a0leaded bronze and iron\u00a0working, Trusty\u2019s Hill also produced a small but impressive assemblage of\u00a0metal artefacts. The high quality of the ironwork assemblage in particular, especially given the small scale of excavations, is a good … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1404,"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions\/1404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gallowaypicts.com\/gallowaypicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}