Cloak-pin with fly

Attached to this tiny gilded fibula (cloak pin) is an even tinier bronze fly. If you wear the small pin on your clothing, it creates the impression that a fly has landed on you. In the Merovingian period we also find fibulas shaped like cicadas and other creatures, which produce the same effect, though in a less subtle fashion. In this fibula, we have probably rediscovered something of what people found amusing in this period.