I was lucky enough to get a chance to visit the National Archaeological Museum in Paris this weekend, which has a rather fine collection of Merovingian stuff. I have wanted to visit since the early 1990’s, when I first started going to Paris on business and discovered the research about Arnegunde, whose tomb in St Denis had been excavated some years before. It was worth the wait!
All those brooches are the inspiration for the project I am working on.
Arnegunde’s treasure:
Some of the shoe buckles are missing from this picture, along with the gold thread remnants of the trim on her clothes, but still, it is easy to see why this was such an important find. Modern DNA analysis and research have led to a complete rethinking about Arnegunde and her clothing. I think it makes much more sense than the original interpretation.
I’ll be organizing all my notes over the next few days and posting new pictures as I absorb all of what I learned.
Diane – Many of those brooches look like they had the decoration engraved into the metal after casting, rather than being carved in the model. But a warning – engraving is really, really difficult. The single pair in the second photo looks like punch dot decoration – this would also be done after casting and is much easier. (although harder than it looks!) You see the punch dot patterns quite a bit on Norse and Pictish pieces, occasionally on Irish material – first I’ve seen it on Merovingian.
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I will go with carving into the model this time. There were plenty of examples of that too – some of the pieces were massively thick. I will post more when I have a moment. I may also have more punch dot examples around (I have tried that on late Norse brooches, and it was an interesting challenge, even with a much larger and simpler design).
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Arnegunde? Could I get some back ground on her and the original theory? The reader’s digest version would be good. When I am not drowning in reports, I will hopefully look this up.
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I’m very much looking forward to seeing more pictures. The exhibit wasn’t in place when I was in Paris several years ago. I welcome you to check out my blog on Merovingian material culture (sigh, I know I’m self-blog-promoting, but really you might appreciate some of the info… honest!)
I did a quick and dirty translation of an article concerning Arnegunde…
http://www.alfalfapress.com/suvia/?p=231
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I love your site! I can’t wait to pore through every single post.
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As a matter of interest do we know how large the belt buckle and counter plate where?
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They are huge. The buckle is 16.3 cm long and 7m wide (7.5 cm at the actual buckle where the belt goes through). The counter-plate is 12.6 cm long and 6.9 cm wide. I don’t have weights or cross-section photos so I can’t tell you much about how thick they are.
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