…well, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire really. Nick Herepath, my predecessor did a study on this topic in the past and I am hoping to continue this with plans for expansion and diversification. To this end I thought I would let people know what I am doing and then you can all help!

Firstly I want to collate the data for all the Roman brooches in the aforementioned area, recorded on the PAS, or as stray finds through the SMR/HERs. This will enable me to look at patterns of brooch types in this area compared with the South and the rest of England. So if anyone out there has a Roman brooch from my area which is unrecorded, please come forward and see me to record it.

Secondly I want to carry out some work on Wirral type brooches. This is a type named/discovered by Rob Philpott in 1997. I will put up pictures and descriptions of them in the next post. Basically I want to prove Rob’s theory that this type of bow brooch was produced on the Wirral and then distributed out. Or at the very least that it originated from this are. I will be doing this by taking very very small samples of the brooch and analysing it to find out it’s alloy composition. Matt Ponting at the University of Liverpool has very kindly agreed to do most of the analysis using his machines in the uni. Once we know the composition of the alloys we can compare them all and see if they are the same/not.

There are very few of these brooches known about/recorded. This is another plea to all those detectorists/members of the public who may have one hidden at home, not realising what it is or how much you could help with an interesting study to prove that the Wirral made something pretty amazing. So if you think (after reading my next post) that you may have one of these brooches, the please get in touch with me.

I will try to keep people updated with my research on this topic. I have already done a little spotlight on a Kraftig profilierte type which will fit nicely into the catalogue (in the distant future!)