A HISTORY OF LONDON Fig 22. — Bone Tag OF Girdle {Guildhall Museum Cat. 122, no. 91) (A) (fig 22). Though the carving is not too well preserved, there is no trace of interlacing, but confronted animals of native type, with possibly birds below. It strikingly resembles one found at Leicester,^ and now in the museum there ; but the usual mordant or strap-end of the ninth century was of silver or bronze like that from Walbrook (fig. 23). This was the only Anglo-Saxon anti- quity found during excavations there in 1902,^^ and closely resembles specimens from St. Austell, Cornwall (before 875), and Cuerdale, Lancashire (before 910). Among bone objects from the City are three pins, probably for the hair, with long broad heads of a type best repre- sented by one from the Thames (fig. 24). This is another example of the interlacing style of decoration in favour during the Viking period, but the subject has been discussed above in connexion with the mag- nificent sword pommel from Fetter Lane (coloured plate, figs. 8, 9). Bone combs are among the commonest relics of the later Anglo-Saxon period, and are well represented in London. These were frequently carried in cases, the two rows of teeth fitting into sockets between strips of bone (fig. 25), or the single row of teeth being covered by double strips (fig. 26). Of the second example only the case survives, but a comb has been supplied from another specimen, the type being fairly common. ■= Both these are in the collection of Mr. F. G. Hilton Price, Dir. Soc. Ant. A more common type is that with a stout handle tapering towards the top and furnished with a single row of teeth (coloured plate, fig. i). Several have been found at York, and others are in the national collection. An interesting comb of composite type (fig. 27) was found in London in I 876, and was exhibited at the Archaeological Institute " in the following year. Fig. 23. — Bronze Girdle-end, Walbrook (J) Fig. 24. — Engraved Bone Pin, Thames (f) It was made of three pieces of bone, the teeth and ornamental ends being cut out of the central plate, and the two side-pieces being attached with flush bronze rivets. After the component parts had been joined in this way, the forty teeth were cut with a fine saw which has left marks on the cross-pieces at their base. The ornamentation of the upper part consists of three T-shaped openings, which were stained green as though originally "> V.C.H. Leic. i, 228, pi. ii, fig. 2. '"' Arch. Jcurn. k, 223. "' Cat. Mus. Antiq. Scot. 279, from graves, Links of Skaill, Orkney. " Arch. Joum. xxxiv, 4.50, with figs. 164
