Posts: 79 Location: Florida, USA
Fri 10 Apr, 2015 7:08 pm
Very nice!
Regarding how frequently you find inlayed decoration on Anglo-Saxon spears, while it is definitely well-documented, it's very rare. In the database I'm building for my PhD dissertation, I have 680 Anglo-Saxon spears from the 5-7th centuries. 3.2% of them (22/680) have some kind of inlay (often only visible when they're xrayed), but this inlay is almost always in the form of bands around the socket. There are only a handful of cases out of the 700 - I think only 3 or 4 - where you get a symbol laid into the actual blade.
Inlay like this was a very special thing.
The classic article on the topic is by Vera Evison:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500048587