This pair of quoits are made of steel with gold decoration being applied using a process whereby gold wire is hammered and burnished onto the surface, and roughened by ‘cross-hatching‘ with scratched lines crossing each other at near right-angles. As the decoration runs right to the extreme edge, they are unlikely to have been intended for regular use in battle, but are more likely to have been ‘ceremonial‘ as sharpening the edge would inevitably have removed some of the decoration.

© The Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford