For #FindsFriday, a decorated comb from an Early to Middle Anglo-Saxon settlement in Worcestershire, though it may not be local.
The comb’s trapezoidal connecting plates, along with its elaborate decoration (sawn-out openwork X designs and undulating chains of overlapping ring-and-dot) match Mairéad Dunlevy’s class C2 Irish combs, dated to the 7th–early 8th centuries.
Irish combs do turn up on Anglo-Saxon sites, but until now only class D combs, dating from the later 7th–early 9th centuries, have been found. Excitingly, this would be the first class C comb recorded in England.
