THE decline in manufacturing which characterized late Roman Britain and the early post-Roman period has caused real difficulties in assessing the extent and degree of continuity which Anglo-Saxon workmanship exhibits with earlier Insular production, but metalworking is perhaps the one exception which can enable us to explore this interface. This paper will, therefore, seek to examine evidence for contact between Anglo-Saxon artificers and consumers of metalwork and traditions of production in late Roman and early post-Roman Britain. In the late Roman period in Britain, there is evidence for the development of distinctive types of personal adornment, which seem in general to be larger than their antecedents and to be made on occasion in silver, pointing to a new importance attached to these items as signifiers of social status. It may be pointed out that brooches, though ubiquitous in first- and second-century contexts in Britain, generally fell out of fashion in the third, the only types to remain in use being the crossbow, disc and penannular types. Crossbow brooches, which were particularly used as marks of rank, do not seem to have been produced after the end of the Roman period, but their possible influence on the design of some Anglo-Saxon metalwork is discussed below. The use of brooches as insignia of office was well-established by the end of the Roman period and continued as late as the tenth century: Constantine Porphyrogenitos documents a ceremony in which the emperor pinned a fibula on the shoulder of a new official.