Late Antiquity and the early medieval period witnessed enormous cultural transformation throughout Europe and the Mediterranean: the decline of the Roman Empire in western Europe, the rise of Byzantium in the East and mass migration of peoples from Asia and northern Europe into areas formerly under Roman control. Between the fourth and tenth centuries CE, in a period of great upheaval, the nation states of modern Europe emerged.
At the centre was Byzantium, where many of the finest objects were made and then given to or traded with so-called 'barbarian' tribes. It was also the period when Christianity took root in material culture, at times in conjunction with pagan images. The many spectacular artefacts from this period in the Wyvern Collection include several substantial and previously unpublished collections of Late Roman and Byzantine jewelry. This was a time when wealth needed to be portable: the collection includes magnificent, jeweled buckles, brooches and diadems; and ornate weapons and horse-trappings, some with intricate garnet cloisonné decoration. Other extraordinary objects — parade swords, coin hoards, fibulae and torcs — complete this multifaceted portrait of a rapidly shifting Europe.
Written by renowned Byzantine scholar Marco Aimone, the fifth catalogue of the Wyvern Collection is supplemented with three specialist essays: Jack Ogden on early manufacturing techniques, Noël Adams on garnet jewelry, and Leslie Webster on early medieval animal style. Jane Kershaw also writes on Viking metalwork and Toby Martin on Anglo-Saxon artefacts.