Cite this as: Ashby, S.P., Tomlinson, L., Presslee, S., Hendy, J., Bliss, A., Minter, F. and Brock, D. 2023 The Portable Antiquities Scheme and the potential of non-metallic finds: A Viking Comb from Shotley, Suffolk, Internet Archaeology . https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.61.11
This article presents a case study in maximising the potential of publicly collected archaeological finds, through collaboration between finder, recorder, curating institution and the research community. It focuses on an object reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, of a type not usually well represented among metal-detected finds: an early-medieval antler hair comb. Typological and biomolecular analysis of the comb - found on the shores of the river Orwell, Suffolk - shows that it was manufactured in Scandinavia in the mid-10th century, before being brought to south-east England. This is the first comb found in England to be identified as Scandinavian via biomolecular means, and represents an important, scientifically-verified demonstration of contact between the regions in the period following initial settlement.
Corresponding author: Steven P. Ashby 
steve.ashby@york.ac.uk
Dept. Archaeology, University of York
Lewis Tomlinson
Dept. Archaeology, University of York
Samantha Presslee
Dept. Archaeology/BioArCH, University of York
Jessica Hendy
Dept. Archaeology/BioArCH, University of York
Alex Bliss
Cotswold Archaeology
Faye Minter
Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service
Dan Brock
Dept. Archaeology, University of York
Figure 1a / Figure 1b: Map showing the approximate location of the comb's findspot. Image credit: Aleks McClain
Figure 2a / Figure 2b: a) Image of the comb. Image credit: Suffolk County Council, CC-BY-SA. b) Drawing of the Shotley comb. Image credit: Donna Wreathall
Figure 3: The key elements of a single-sided composite comb. Image credit: Pat Walsh
Figure 4: RTI Image of the Shotley comb. Image credit: Dan Brock
Figure 5: 3D Model of the Shotley comb. Image credit: Dan Brock
Figure 6: MALDI-ToF spectrum of the Shotley comb. Image credit: Sam Presslee
Abrams, L. 2012 'Diaspora and identity in the Viking Age', Early Medieval Europe 20, 17–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2011.00333.x
Ambrosiani, K. 1981 Viking Age Combs, Comb Making and Comb Makers in the Light of Finds from Birka and Ribe. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 2, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.
Andreeff, A. and R. Potter 2014 'Imaging picture stones: Comparative studies of rendering techniques' in H. Alexandersson, A. Andreeff and A. Bünz (eds) Med hjärta och hjärna: En vänbok till professor Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, Göteborg: Institutionen för historiska studier, Göteborgs universitet. 669-89.
Ashby, S.P., A.N. Coutu and S.M. Sindbæk 2015 'Urban Networks and Arctic Outlands: Craft Specialists and Reindeer Antler in Viking Towns', European Journal of Archaeology 18, 679–704. https://doi.org/10.1179/1461957115Y.0000000003
Buckley, M. 2018 'Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) Collagen Fingerprinting for the Species Identification of Archaeological Bone Fragments' in Christina M. Giovas and Michelle J. LeFebvre (eds) Zooarchaeology in Practice: Case Studies in Methodology and Interpretation in Archaeofaunal Analysis, New York: Springer. 227-47. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64763-0_12
Buckley, M. and Collins, M.J. 2011 'Collagen Survival and Its Use for Species Identification in Holocene-Lower Pleistocene Bone Fragments from British Archaeological and Paleontological Sites', Antiqua 1(1). https://doi.org/10.4081/antiqua.2011.e1
Callmer, J. 2020 'Combmaking in southern and eastern Scandinavia and the Baltic region (c. AD 700--900)' in S.P. Ashby and S.M. Sindbæk Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns, Oxford: Oxbow. 133–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv138ws19.9
Giles, J.A. 1912 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, London: G. Bell and Son.
Hendy, J. 2021 'Ancient protein analysis in archaeology', Science Advances 7, American Association for the Advancement of Science: eabb9314. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb9314
Jesch, J. 2015 The Viking Diaspora, London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315708331
Jones, J. and N. Smith 2017 'The Strange Case of Dame Mary May's tomb: The performative value of Reflectance Transformation Imaging and its use in deciphering the visual and biographical evidence of a late 17th-century portrait effigy', Internet Archaeology 44. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.44.9
Kershaw, J. 2013 Viking Identities. Scandinavian Jewellery in England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199639526.001.0001
Kershaw, J.F. 2009 'Culture and gender in the Danelaw: Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian brooches', Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5, 295–325. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VMS.1.100682
Lewis, M. 2016 'A Detectorist's Utopia? Archaeology and Metal-Detecting in England and Wales', Open Archaeology 2, 127-39. https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2016-0009
Luik, H., Peets, J., Ljungkvist, J. et al. 2020 'Antler combs from the Salme ship burials: find context, origin, dating and manufacture', Estonian Journal of Archaeology 24, 3–44. https://doi.org/10.3176/arch.2020.1.01
MacDonald, L.W. 2011 'Visualising an Egyptian Artefact in 3D: Comparing RTI with Laser Scanning' In Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2011), 6-8 July 2011. https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/eva2011.28
Malzbender, T., D. Gelb and H. Wolters 2001 'Polynomial texture maps' in Proceedings of the 28th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques: 519–28 (SIGGRAPH '01), New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. 519–528. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/383259.383320
Margaryan, A., Lawson, D.J., Sikora, M. et al. 2020 'Population genomics of the Viking world', Nature 585, 390–96. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2688-8
Muñoz-Rodriguez, M., S. Presslee, K. McGrath, N. Hausmann, V. Hilberg, S. Kalmring, L. Holmquist, J. Hendy and S.P. Ashby 2023 'In the footsteps of Ohthere: biomolecular analysis of early Viking Age hair combs from Hedeby (Haithabu)', Antiquity 97, 1233–48. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.118
Presslee, S., Penkman, K., Fischer, R., Richards-Slidel, E., Southon, J., Hospitaleche, C.A., Collins, M., and MacPhee, R. 2020 'Assessment of Different Screening Methods for Selecting Palaeontological Bone Samples for Peptide Sequencing', Journal of Proteomics 230, 103986. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jprot.2020.103986
Smith, N., G. Beale, J. Richards and N. Scholma-Mason 2018 'Maeshowe: The application of RTI to Norse runes (data paper)', Internet Archaeology 47. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.47.8
Strohalm, M., Kavan, D., Novák, P., Volný, M. and Havlícek, V. 2010 'mMass 3: A Cross-Platform Software Environment for Precise Analysis of Mass Spectrometric Data', Analytical Chemistry 82(11), 4648–4651. https://doi.org/10.1021/ac100818g
Tomlinson, L. 2020 How to Avoid Getting your Sheep/Goat: Testing the Bacollite Tool for Automated Classification of ZooMS Spectra for Viking Age Research, MSc Dissertation: Department of Archaeology, University of York.
von Holstein, I.C., S.P. Ashby, N.L. van Doorn, S.M. Sachs, M. Buckley, M. Meirai, I. Barnes, A. Brundle and M.J. Collins 2014 'Searching for Scandinavians in pre-Viking Scotland: molecular fingerprinting of Early Medieval combs', Journal of Archaeological Science 41, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2013.07.026
Watt, W.G.T. 1888 'Notice of the discovery of a stone cist, with an Iron Age interment, at Skaill Bay', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 22, 283–85. https://doi.org/10.9750/PSAS.022.283.285
Welker, F., Hajdinjak, M., Talamo, S., Jaouen, K., Dannemann, M., David, F., Julien, M., Meyer, M., Kelso, J., Barnes, I., Brace, S., Kamminga, P., Fischer, R., Kessler, B.M., Stewart, J.R., Pääbo, S., Collins, M.J., and Hublin, J.-J. 2016 'Palaeoproteomic Evidence Identifies Archaic Hominins Associated with the Châtelperronian at the Grotte Du Renne', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113(40), 11162-7. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605834113
Wyatt-Spratt, S. 2022 'After the revolution: A review of 3D modelling as a tool for stone artefact analysis', Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology 5, 215–237. https://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.103
Internet Archaeology is an open access journal based in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Except where otherwise noted, content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY) Unported licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that attribution to the author(s), the title of the work, the Internet Archaeology journal and the relevant URL/DOI are given.
Terms and Conditions | Legal Statements | Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy | Citing Internet Archaeology
Internet Archaeology content is preserved for the long term with the Archaeology Data Service. Help sustain and support open access publication by donating to our Open Access Archaeology Fund.
Home
