The horsehead buckles are a particularly category of buckle that raise, and may even answer many questions about the end of Roman Britain.
The horsehead buckles are exclusively a British phenomenon. Only one horsehead buckle and one horsehead buckle plate have been found outside Britain and it seems reasonably safe to assume that these both originally came from Britain.
Horsehead buckles are found both in Roman British and early Anglo-Saxon contexts. When found in Anglo-Saxon graves they are often found in women’s graves. This, and the small proportions of the buckles has led some to conclude that the buckles were primarily women’s buckles.
There is, however, no necessity to reach this conclusion. How the buckles were used by the Saxons does not necessarily say anything about how they were used by their British manufacturers. As far as as we are aware, for instance, no British strap end has been found in Anglo-Saxon graves associated with a horsehead or dolphin D ring buckle, whereas Saxon strap ends have, which indicates that the buckles are not being used in their original context.
There is no evidence of British women wearing buckles in the 4th-5th century, and one thing that is notable about the horsehead buckles is their great homogeneity both in terms of size and style, compared to all other late Roman British buckle groups. This is not caused by manufacture in one location. As we shall see below, the evidence suggests manufacture in a wide number of areas by a wide number of craftsmen. This combination of stylistic homogeneity and wide area of manufacture strongly suggests some kind of official function for the buckles, and some kind of official influence on their production.
It may also be worth pointing out, that while in modern terms a horsehead decoration would tend to have either a rather feminine pony club feel to it, or alternatively a slightly cowboy kitsch feel, to the British of the 5th century, a horse was not only a symbol of wealth and power, but also, of course, a formidable weapon of war.
The question of whether the horseheads of the horsehead buckles represent anything more specific is a difficult one. Their patterns of distribution across the country suggest that they may.
Horsehead buckles have two main concentrations, one in the area around Water
Newton and Peterborough, and one further west in the area around Cirencester.
However, they are also found widely across most of the rest of south England,
and east England, up as far Yorkshire. However, as interesting as where they
do appear is, the areas where they do not. They are lacking, for instance, in
places such as Verulamium, where occupation continues well into the 5th century.
There also appears to be some link between post-Roman linear earthworks and
the distribution of horsehead buckles. In the west of England, for instance,
horsehead buckles are plentiful to the north of Wansdyke but less common to the south,
and to the east of Bokerly Dyke. In the east of England, horsehead buckles
are plentiful to the west of Foss Ditch, but almost entirely absent to the east.
It is even possible that the horseheads have political significance.
Oblong Horseheads
The majority of horsehead buckles are D rings. However, it seems impossible for the horsehead buckles to have derived originally from dolphin D rings. The modelling of the dolphins on almost all dolphin D rings is much simpler, more abstract, and probably later than a large proportion of horsehead buckles (1, 2, 3). This suggests that if the dolphin D rings and the horseheads are related, the dolphin D rings are derived from the horseheads rather than the other way round.
