File:Medieval buckle frame (FindID 190221).jpg

English: An unusually large buckle frame dating to the medieval period. The frame is D-shaped with a narrowed pin bar. The wide outside edge is decorated with an engraved zig-zag forming triangles; those with their apexes towards the external edge are filled with faint rocker-arm engraving. There is iron corrosion adhering to the pin bar. Most unusually, the underside of both loop and bar are hollow, and so the buckle frame has a C-shaped cross-section. Even more strangely, it has three separate small copper-alloy rivet-like pegs which can just be seen polished flat on the upper face. There is one at either end of the bar, and one in the centre of the outside edge. The rivets are as long as the buckle frame is thick; they do not extend beyond the thickness of the frame. Their use is uncertain, but they may have held an infill of a different material (such as green-stained bone), making the buckle frame appear to have been made from thick metal but being actually cheaper and lighter. The frame measures 41mm in length and 57mm in width.

Good parallels in solid metal are familiar from London (Egan and Pritchard 1991, nos. 263-4), often with annulet decoration; both of the London examples are from late 14th-century contexts. This composite construction, with the frame made up of two sandwiched components, does not appear to be paralleled at present.