The network visualisations presented above highlight three main structural properties embedded in the variation of square-headed brooches:
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The conventional English, Kentish, Continental and Scandinavian series can be re-conceived as a single network, within which the Scandinavian and Continental series are not always easy to separate, and the English and Kentish series are highly distinctive
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Patterns of internal stylistic variation in the four conventional series are highly comparable, with the presence of both heterogeneous and homogenous clusters, the latter being the latest development in at the least the English, Scandinavian and Continental series, and possibly also the Kentish series
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These late and strong connections are often found over greater geographical distances than they are short ones
Some of these patterns have been previously identified, but only in particular regions and without regard to the wider European context. For instance, Hines (1997, 306) noted the increased homogeneity among the later English square–headed brooches, while Kristoffersen (2000, 157–66) and Røstad (2016, 220–3) have also noted similar homogenisation among various later types of Scandinavian brooches, including the square-headed and cruciform varieties. The same has also been shown for the latest English cruciform brooches that were roughly contemporary with the latest square-headed brooches (Martin 2015, 64–70). Homogenisation (i.e. diminished invention and increased citation) therefore appears to have been a generalised European phenomenon for multiple classes of object during the sixth century, just before all these brooch forms became obsolete.
As early as 1941, Nissen Fett remarked upon the surprisingly long-distance connections between the Continental square–headed brooches in a brief discussion about their general lack of regional characteristics, commenting that in this respect, they differed from the Scandinavian series (Nissen Fett 1941, 60), which indeed appear to have stronger regional tendencies (e.g. Røstad 2016, 298–310). Kristoffersen, however, has also remarked upon the long-distance connections found between some closely related brooches of the Scandinavian series between Rogaland, Sognefjord and Oslofjord (Kristoffersen 1999, 166–7), some equivalent to those observed above. The offered explanation was that of a consolidated and increasingly distinctive regional Jæren style typical of southwest Norway, limited to that region in the earliest phases, but expanding far beyond it in the sixth century as a sign of the region’s political ascendency, and the potential role of the women that wore these brooches in exogamous marriage alliances (Kristoffersen 2000, 139–42, 168–71). Røstad (2016, 414–23) has since elaborated on these ideas by suggesting that women who moved between communities in this manner retained their brooches, displaying their specific ethnic identities as foreigners in their new communities.
Hines (1997, 308) has also shown that the very latest items in the English series pushed further north than the earlier items, just as the Scandinavian series did. Meanwhile, the English cruciform brooches mentioned above similarly dissolved their previous regional distributions into longer distance connections in the middle sixth century (Martin 2015, 185–9).Footnote 8 Further afield, Curta’s work on some of the so-called ‘Slavic’ brooches of Eastern Europe produced the same results, although these items were probably a little later, dating to the later sixth and seventh centuries. Curta used a ‘nearest neighbour’ analysis of precisely the same kind of motifs to show the predominance of long-distance relationships between the Carpathian Basin and the Middle Dnieper/southwest Ukraine, as well as over the greater distance to Masuria (Curta 2008, 53; 2010, 150; 2011, 66). The relatively late development of long-distance connections and increased homogeneity revealed by the network analyses are therefore partially replicated in previous work, and they also appear to have been part of a much wider pattern of changes seen across Europe.
Our chronologies have sufficient resolution to be confident that from Artic Norway to the Mediterranean, and from the North to the Black Sea, it was the sixth century that was the period in which homogenisation and long-distance connections increased. More tentatively, they suggest that this happened initially in Scandinavia during the first half of the sixth century, then in Britain and on the Continent around the mid-sixth century, and finally in eastern Europe during the later sixth century where it continued into the seventh. Although it is feasible that this took place all over Europe simultaneously, further research is needed to properly interrelate presently disjointed regional chronologies. However, even if these changes were not entirely concurrent, they certainly overlapped, and it is remarkable that they occurred across such a large area in such an analogical manner.
Nissen Fett (1941, 60) explained the long-distance connections evident in the Continental series by the breakdown of communities along the Rhine and Danube and their dispersal by processes linked to the end of the Western Empire. Indeed, this period is known as the ‘Migration Period’ for a reason, and although there is little doubt there were substantial migrations and disruptions in Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, none of the strongly linked nodes in Fig. 8 correspond to any historically recorded migration, regardless of how sceptical we may be of their grounding in reality (Geary 2002; Goffart 2006). It is also true that none of the regional series of square-headed brooches (Fig. 2) correspond to any historically posited tribal territory or early kingdom, no matter how far we might stretch the possibilities. Moreover, graves containing square-headed brooches are always a minority in a cemetery, to the point where few sites yield more than one grave containing such items. These characteristics have led to a tendency in scholarship on the square-headed brooches of Europe to focus instead on the geographical dispersal of stylistic influence to fill an art-historical narrative, a pursuit to which considerable importance has been attached since Salin (1904) showed that these items were likely to be the primary vehicles by which Salin’s Style I was disseminated.
Hines is one of few scholars to have addressed the homogenisation event in England, characterising it as a ‘concentration of the direction of productive effort’, among a series of dress ornaments that were worn to display status among the wealthiest families, being generally found in only the richest grave assemblages (Hines 1997, 301, 308–9). Similar conclusions have been reached for the latest cruciform brooches, suggesting that their homogenisation and long-distance connectivity were part of the consolidation of elites involved in the foundation of early kingdoms (Martin 2015, 185–9). As such, the latest examples of square-headed brooches may well have been part of a more long-term pattern of the more restricted and consolidated elites that become starkly visible in the extraordinarily wealthy and monumental burials of the later sixth and seventh centuries in England and eastern Sweden (Hines 1997, 309). In this sense, these brooches may have become increasingly emblematic of an elevated class of individual, so that the symbol became more standardised, recognisable and homogenous. Røstad (2016, 337–40) has come to the same conclusions for the homogenisation of relief brooches in Scandinavia, interpreting these items as symbols of an ethnic or cultural identity that became more emblematic during the earlier sixth century, indicative of a social structure that was becoming more rigid and less negotiable. In the later 6th and 7th centuries, Scandinavia was the only place in which square-headed brooches continued to be made, albeit in a slightly different form (see Olsen 2006). Fascinatingly, Røstad (2018, 96–8) identifies in the very initial stages of this later transformation a period of high creativity and heterogeneity, providing a window into the potentially perpetual cycles of innovation and conservatism through which material cultural forms can pass.
These interpretations, in which brooches were made in intentionally more rigid and emblematic forms in order to express an increasingly rigid social structure, can be slightly adjusted through a more nuanced theoretical consideration of the relationship between objects and power. Power can be thought of as an asymmetry between agents resulting from action or bodily performance, such as an act of violence, humiliation, honour, generosity, obligation and so on. The only way of sustaining the asymmetry beyond that momentary performance is by using material culture (Latour 2005, 64–71). This could be as blatant as a razor wire fence or a colonial plantation, or as subtle as, for instance, a mode of dress or personal ornamentation. Indeed, different modes of dress cannot help but influence social behaviours, and it is perhaps these properties that motivated the sixth-century adaptations in flows of citation and invention, with a concentration on the former rather than the latter. Despite much speculation on the matter, we cannot presently determine precisely what actions transported this information in the form of brooches: itinerant craftspeople, face-to-face gift exchange or patrilocal marriage exchanges are all possibilities, but possibilities without demonstrable supporting evidence. Nevertheless, we can say with certainty that there is no such thing as an abstract ‘social connection’. Such connections have no essence beyond their bodily performance unless they are constituted by physical objects. In this sense, however, they may have moved, these brooches were not expressions or symbols of connection: they were the connections. The homogenisation and extended connections observed in the sixth century therefore do not symbolise the growth of links between more consolidated elites: they actually constituted those links. In so doing, square-headed brooches created the idea of an extended elite community that went far beyond the locality in which an individual lived. It was this asymmetry—i.e. the connection or lack of connection with a faraway place—that seems to have become especially important to some individuals throughout Europe during the sixth century.
Van Oyen (2016c) has interpreted a similar tendency in the terra sigillata pottery produced in Roman Gaul, suggesting that stylistic relationships can be characterised as ‘relational constellations’, which are essentially more abstract versions of the networks explored here. Such constellations can be ‘fluid’ or ‘categorical’. ‘Fluid constellations’ are characterised by creativity and invention, producing heterogeneous sets of objects. ‘Categorical constellations’ are characterised by rigidity and conservatism, leading to homogeneous types. Because homogeneity presupposes a commonly regarded set of principles to which objects can subscribe to a greater or lesser extent, the artistry of any such item can be immediately judged, so that categorical constellations create the potential for increased internal competition (Van Oyen 2016c, 368). In these terms, across sixth-century Europe, square-headed brooches switched from fluid to categorical constellations, producing not only the potential for competition between those with and without such items, but also signalling elements of internal competition between wearers of more easily compared jewellery.