The green buckle from York

It’s time to highlight a new buckle! Some time ago, Robbie Hoen, one of our comrades from the early medieval Frisian reenactment group Swaninga, told us that they had reconstructed a special bone buckle from York. Several buckles have been found in this Northumbrian city, but one stands out in particular: the green buckle found in Clifford Street.

The bone buckle is made from a single piece of bone and measures 4.8 x 2.7 x 0.7 cm. It is a fairly compact buckle with a large oval hole. The smaller hole next to the oval one served as a fastener for the tongue, which is now missing. The buckle is also decorated with several horizontal lines and was attached to the belt with copper rivets. The buckle dates from between 866 and 1066 AD. The most remarkable thing about the buckle, however, is that it is dyed green with a solution of vinegar, vitriol and copper. Copper rusts when it comes into contact with vinegar, giving off a green colour. Because bone is porous, the colour of the solution is absorbed into the bone, causing it to turn green. However, this green colour can apparently also be obtained by soaking the buckle for several days in a copper pot with goat's milk and copper and storing it in horse manure.

Following Swaninga's experiment, we decided to try dyeing bone ourselves. Since we did not have access to horse manure, we decided to dye the buckle with a solution of vinegar and copper. We stored the buckle in a sealed preserving jar. To our surprise, however, our buckle turned out to be more blue than green! The colour did not soak into the bone evenly. It is possible that there was too much fat in the bone, making it less porous. Although the buckle was not found in early medieval Frisia, it does provide an interesting insight into the techniques available at that time for dyeing bone. In any case, it was a very interesting experiment!

Don't forget to read our previous post about the buckle from Dongjum (see our previous post ‘Dongjum belt buckle’).