A garment brooch made of gilded silver and adorned with almandines—a type of garnet—was discovered near the village of Reez, close to Rostock, by a volunteer conducting a metal detector survey in a field. The volunteer, one of more than 250 archaeological monument caretakers, found the brooch during a field survey.
“It is an incredibly valuable piece,” said Detlef Jantzen, the state archaeologist, according to Die Zeit. “That’s one of the highlight finds this year,” Jantzen told the German Press Agency, as reported by Süddeutsche Zeitung. He noted that the almandines are “brilliantly polished and precisely cut,” and to enhance their brilliance, the goldsmith ribbed the gilded background of the setting.
“We know comparable pieces so far mainly from the Rhineland and from Sweden,” Jantzen said, according to N-TV. “They occur in particularly richly furnished noble graves,” he added.
The piece is attributed to the Migration Period. “Climate changes that led to hunger are considered one cause of the prolonged migration movements after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth century,” reported Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The climate became colder and wetter,” Jantzen said, according to N-TV.
In February, a volunteer found a piece of jewelry from the Migration Period near Göthen in the Lewitz region of the Ludwigslust-Parchim district: a fragment of a bronze garment brooch with gilding. Archaeologists date this piece to the sixth century based on its decoration.
These finds are a result of detector searches by volunteer archaeological monument caretakers. For the last 15 years, Germany’s State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation trains interested amateurs to recognize and classify finds. The first volunteers received their certificates in 2008, authorizing them to use metal detectors. To record their locations, which is important for further research, the hobby archaeologists use GPS devices.
“We find incredibly valuable pieces of jewelry from the Migration Period in recent years,” Jantzen said.
Archaeologists are considering whether the presence of such elaborate artifacts indicates that not all residents had left the area during the Migration Period. The discovery of the garnet-studded brooch suggests that there may have been a wealthy upper class in the region despite the hardships of the time.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
This article was originally published at www.jpost.com
