Did comb dress Celtic beard or horses mane?
A metal comb is the latest surprising object to have been shown to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It was found in a ploughed field without any associations, but the style of the decoration suggests it dates from the first century ad. It could have been for dressing horse hair, or for human use. The comb was found last summer near Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire by Russell Peach, who brought ice cream tubs full of metal objects to his local finds liaison officer. “Most of it was not worth recording”, says Angie Bolton, FLO for Warwickshire and Worcestershire, “but this was lying on top of one of the tubs with bits of tractor beneath it”. The comb was cast with its decoration, which is similar to that on chariot fittings and the backs of copper alloy mirrors made around AD25–75. Analysis by Mary Davis, National Museums and Galleries of Wales, shows the metal to be tin bronze (12–14% tin, with no lead but a small amount of arsenic), typical for this date. One of the outer prongs appears
