Bronze Pin with Double Spiral Head from Broad Street, Abingdon: 7th century AD

Abingdon was an important centre of Anglo-Saxon activity on the Thames, and the monastery founded there in the late 7th century grew to be one of the most important in England.

The pin was found when excavating a Medieval rubbish-pit at a little distance from the main centres of Saxon occupation in Abingdon, but is known as a type of the 7th century from examples in Oxfordshire and Kent.

In the 7th century, the older Germanic female dress style of a pair of brooches fastening the dress at the shoulders and suspending a string of beads, was replaced by a new style of dress influenced by Christianity and the Byzantine empire: a more Mediterranean, sewn dress style, chain-linked headdress pins and gold jewellery. The new fashions arrived in Kent and quickly spread west.