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Author Topic: Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter  (Read 1079 times)

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Offline Joe Sermarini

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Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter
« on: November 14, 2019, 09:23:04 am »


Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter.

What would have been the purpose of the plate with a loop at the center? I thought it might be a scale pan but those typically are connected at three points on the edge. Any ideas?
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Offline SC

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    • A Handbook of Late Roman Bronze Coin Types 324-395.
Re: Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2019, 07:19:24 pm »
My first thoughts are the same as yours.

Never seen that design but it looks like that.

Another possibility is something attached to fabric, like a giant button but as a decoration.  Wouldn't be Roman in that case but could be earlier late bronze age or iron age....

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Offline TenthGen

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Re: Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2019, 08:33:18 pm »
Polished metal was sometimes used as a mirror. It's a bit hard to imagine from the photo, but could that have been a suspended mirror?

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Re: Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2019, 01:26:58 am »
I think it is too big to have been a button and not flat enough to be a mirror.
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Re: Roman bronze plate with loop at center 13.5 cm diameter
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2019, 09:41:50 am »
I don't mean a button for fastening clothes, I mean a metallic decoration sewn on clothes but in the same manner as a button.

 We know that both bronze age, and later nomadic steppe peoples, often had many metal ornaments seen on their clothes.  There are Scythian grave with hundreds of small metal bits that were sewn on clothing.  The so-called scale armor bits that are tear-drop shaped, convex and have a single hole in the middle were actually decorations sewn onto clothing.

Maybe something like that.

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