File:An Early Medieval Iron sword pommel with silver Carolingian decoration. (FindID 237370).jpg

English: A large iron sword pommel covered with silver sheet. The pommel has a sub-spherical central lobe with a smaller elongated rounded lobe to either side, and two iron rivets to attach the pommel to the upper guard. The silver sheet is decorated with incised lines, but the underlying iron is corroded and in places the decoration is obscured or worn away, revealing cross-hatched grooves on the surface of the iron which would have helped to fix the silver to the iron. The central lobe appears to have a design of simplified acanthus leaves extending downwards from the top on at least one of the main faces; on each of the side faces is an irregular semi-circle enclosing a circle. The side lobes have double-line borders but any other decoration is unclear.

Dimensions: 78.8mm (width) x 39.9mm (height) x 36.5mm (thickness).

Discussion: The form of the pommel suggests it is from a sword of Petersen's (1919: 142- 149) type S, which is usually decorated in either Jellinge or Mammen art-style, suggesting a date of late 9th or 10th century. The leaves on the Hollingbourne pommel, however, are not the usual sort of tendril of Viking Age art, but more naturalistic, as in Carolingian and Ottonian art and Anglo-Saxon sculpture. Pommels with prominent central lobes are shown in Continental and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of a wide range of dates (e.g. the mid-9th-century Lothair Gospels, or early 11th-century manuscripts from Canterbury and (possibly) Winchester (Schramm & Mütherich 1962: pl. 25; Temple 1976: pls. 270 & 275). It is possible, therefore, that the Hollingbourne pommel was in Continental rather than Viking Age style, and should be dated to the Carolingian to Ottonian periods (broadly 9th and 10th centuries). A Viking origin is not out of the question, however, on the basis of the form.

Published in the Portable Antiquities and Treasure Act Annual Report 2008, no. 192.