Merowingerzeitliche Filigranscheibenfibeln westlich des Rheins

More than 650 filigree disc brooches from private and museum collections in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany form the core of this study of one of the most important object-types of the later Merovingian period. This publication analyses the morphological and technological characteristics of Frankish and Burgundian filigree disc brooches, as well as their typo-chronological evolution. This reveals the transfer of ideas and the mechanisms of production over the course of their development, which in turn enables, among other things, an assessment of the influences of the Romano-Mediterranean cultural milieu on the creation and development of these brooches as well as their place within the general evolution of disc brooches north of the Alps. The account of the iconographic and written sources provides clues as to how these brooches were worn and leads on to an attempt to reconstruct the clothes with which they were associated. This group of brooches is not only heterogeneous from a technical and stylistic point of view, but also in the quality of the materials used in their manufacture. A comparison of grave inventories shows that there was a correlation between the quality of a brooch and on one hand the range of other burial offerings and on the other the location of the grave. Finally, the results of this sociographic study form the point of departure for a reassessment of Rainer Christlein’s grouping of these brooches by quality, and the subsequent revisions.