File:Roman zoomorphic plate brooch (cockerel) (FindID 482285).jpg

English: A damaged and incomplete cast copper-alloy Roman zoomorphic plate brooch (2nd century AD). The brooch is in the form of a domestic sitting cockerel. This brooch is piriform in plan, rounded at the front and slightly pointed at the back. It has a domed upper surface and is hollow on the underside. The head of the bird is above the rounded end and the tail is above the pointed end. The head is flat and sub-circular in profile and has a comb on top but with no defining points; there is little of the beak surviving. The eyes are seemingly differently rendered on each side; on one side the eye is a circular punch, but the other is clearly a punched ring-and-dot motif. The bird's rounded front is plain and has been punctured as a result of old damage, damage extending to the side. Each side of the bird's back has four possible linear cells, some angled back like feathers, with two small oval cells towards the front. Above these, at the neck, is a row of small triangular cells. These would have been inlaid with enamel and there is a small amount of blue enamel surviving on one side of the bird. The arrangement is very similar to that on a brooch illustrated in Crummy (1983, 16; ref. 75). The sickle type tail is largely missing due to an old break but the remaining stub has the remains of a circular perforation.

Below the tail, on the underside of the body, there is a double rounded pin in which a small axis bar and the head of the pin survive in situ. At the opposite end of the plate there is a small stub, all that remains of the catch-plate. This brooch has corroded to a variable mid-green colour with small areas of a surviving brown patina. A similar brooch can be found illustrated in Hattatt (2000, 360; ref. 167), with another recorded on this database from Calbourne CP (Isle of Wight), ref. IOW-E88B94.