A Frankish Belt Buckle of the Seventh Century
An ornamented Frankish belt buckle in the Walters Art Museum, worn by men and women of high standing in the seventh century — the generations after Clovis. Interlace filling every available surface is the ornamental language his dynasty's aristocracy shared with its Germanic neighbours.
Clovis did not found a Frankish kingdom so much as make one out of several. He killed or absorbed the other Frankish kings, defeated the last Roman commander in northern Gaul, beat the Alamanni and the Visigoths, and converted to Catholic rather than Arian Christianity — which made him acceptable to a Gallo-Roman episcopate that had every other reason to resist him. The material culture of the century after him is what this buckle belongs to. See Clovis and the rise of the Merovingian Franks.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
