File:Late Roman- Early Early-Medieval buckle (FindID 598915).jpg

English: An incomplete Late Roman (or Early post-Roman/ Early-Medieval, c. AD 370-500) copper alloy zoomorphic buckle of Hawkes and Dunning Type IB, missing the axis bar, the pin and part of one arm.

The frame would have originally been D-shaped and is flat to both back and front, with faceted edges. A pair of outwards-facing horse-heads project from the outside edge, perched apparently on the crests of two confronted dolphins beneath.
The dolphins have open jaws, emphasised by lines of C-shapes stamped closely together. Between the jaws is a plain lozenge-shaped area. The dolphin eyes are ring-and-dot stamps and behind is a collar created with a pair of transverse grooves with c.4 punched dots between. Immediately behind is a line of C-shaped stamped closely together.
Above the top dolphin jaw is another line of C-shapes stamped closely together, but in the opposite direction to those emphasising the top jaw. This is the neck of the horse-head. Another line of C-shaped stamps runs up the back of the head to the triangular ear, missing on one head but on the other delineated with a vertical groove inside a pointed oval groove. The eye aga in ring-and-dot punched, with a rounded edge to the head above the eye, and the snout is short (perhaps rather more like that of a dog) with a V-shaped opening for the mouth.

The arms of the frame behind the dolphins are plain and undecorated, c.3mm wide and 2mm thick, expending to 2.6mm thick at the break with the axis bar. The incomplete buckle measures 23.07x24.18x2.75 (at the ornate outside edge) mm and weighs 3.22g. Much of the original shiny brown patina remains, except for a patch on the reverse and in prominent area of the frame.