We’ve discovered the pond area is a good 10 degrees cooler than the front yard. Amazing.
Jane had bought a bunch of sale plants from Wayside Gardens end-of-season sale. They arrived looking pretty sad, but should perk up a bit with sunlight and TLC. Hostas, heuchera, plumbago, and a couple of creeping thyme, plus a baby hinoki cypress and a blue geranium. Those are to plant tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I’m just typing away. I’ve got some office work I have to do, which I’ve been postponing
Something new and interesting for you: The Staffordshire Hoard, more extensive than Sutton Hoo and only discovered in July this year. http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk
It looks amazing. Rosemary
Thanks for the great link! It really is something else. Carolyn and I wrote a whole “robbery, chase, ditch, and die” scenario about it this morning, when she ran across the article on CNN. 😀 But they didn’t have anything like these pictures. Totally cool!
Indiana J must be turning handsprings.
Thanks for that! I’d seen the single photo CNN has, but that’s amazing. Jane and I have a theory of what it is: loot, possibly from a shrine or chapel—1. it was an area and time of partly Celtic, partly Christian population. 2. gold is not effective as armor, though it may be embellishment on weapons: but the large quantity of it could also mean it was votive gifts to a holy place, or the accouterments of a king. 3. a Christian is less likely to have folded that cross than a non-Christian. 4. folding it may have let it fit into a pack or sack. 5. nobody, once it was buried, came back after it, ergo those who buried it were dead.
Our notion is that somebody, probably a non-Christian, stole it from a Christian site, either robbed a grave or a chapel, made off with it, but was too closely pursued. 20-30 lbs of gold/silver made running (and survival) hard. So they buried it and sprinted for the territorial border. But they were caught, done in, and unfortunately, did not tell the owners where the hoard was before their demise.
How’s that for a guess.
Oh I agree whole heartedly with you on this one. They were giving a date of around 675 AD and zipping off with monastery goodies was a tried and true occupation that was going on long before the Vikings got around to it. One account I read on the BBC news stated ‘inlayed precious stones’ which looked like red enamel to me — something that shows up a lot in both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon pieces. Besides the folded up cross — something that may have been on a copy of the Bible or some other bit of decoration — was another cross, plus a gold strip with a latin inscription. That’s definitely not something likely to be part of the standard Anglo-Saxon household accoutrements! With the pieces so compressed, like you say to make it easier to transport, it’s not too likely that it was a monastery hiding things from the bad guys (Irish bogs were super for that). The sword pommel is a bit of a puzzle, but could have been a looted piece. Another possibility would be loot taken from a battlefield, but I wouldn’t expect so much of it, although that might explain some of the pieces which definitely seem to be armor fragments. Here’s a fun thought — evidence of one of Arthur’s battles and this is what the locals scavanged from the battlefield, hid it and then got run over by another battle and were never able to come back for it. Course the timing is off, but still a fun thought. I can’t wait until NatGeo has it in the magazine — at least I hope they do. Here’s another link with a video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/staffordshire/8272058.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/staffordshire/8272058.stm
and one from yahoo with video and a slideshow: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090924/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_anglo_saxon_gold
On the origin of the hoard, the official website http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk says,
“The two most striking features of the hoard are that it is unbalanced and it is of exceptionally high quality. It is unbalanced because of what we don’t find. There is absolutely nothing feminine. There are no dress fittings, brooches or pendants. These are the gold objects most commonly found from the Anglo-Saxon era. The vast majority of items in the hoard are martial – war gear, especially sword fittings.
…
Most of the gold and silver items appear to have been deliberately torn from the objects to which they were originally attached. We have over 80 gold and garnet pommel caps, and there also appear to be fittings from helmets.
This is not simply loot; swords were being singled out for special treatment. If it was just gold they were after we would have found the rich fittings from sword belts. Perhaps gold fittings were stripped from the swords to depersonalise them – to remove the identity of the previous owner. The blades then being remounted and reused.
It looks like a collection of trophies, but it is impossible to say if the hoard was the spoils from a single battle or a long and highly successful military career. We also cannot say who the original, or the final, owners were, who took it from them, why they buried it or when. it will be debated for decades.”
There are hundreds of high-resolution photos of the hoard here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/sets/72157622378376316/
Perhaps the owners or looters suffered a similar fate to this (unrelated) group – 51 young men from around the 10th century, possibly Vikings, decapitated and their bodies thrown into an old quarry:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/dorset/8250295.stm
Thanks, tulrose, for sharing! I’d read the newstory this afternoon. I was puzzled by the Christian pieces too, so the looting scenario makes sense. But someone forgot where they buried it? Or were they killed? We’ll never know. I’d love to visit the site and see what they’ve found firsthand. I want to be an archeologist in my next life!
Maybe they buried it, and couldn’t come back for a while, and when they did someone was living in the area, thus making it impossible to dig up the loot without being caught? Much like burying loot from a bank robbery in the modern age and coming back to find someone’s built a shopping mall on top of your buried treasure. You can’t exactly ask for permission to dig up the loot in that case without attracting way too much attention from the authorities.
Thanks, tulrose! Nice pictures. You led me to try npr.org. 9/24/9. Good article and more photos.
The history nerd in me danced a little jig of joy when I saw that article. I can’t help but wonder if it is loot from a battlefield that involved nobles, or perhaps some D.B. Cooper-esque ancient heist. The workmanship is amazing, particularly for the era. Very cool stuff.
CNN has more details and pictures now. 5 kg of gold and 2.5 kg of silver (remember if you’re trying to look up the price of precious metals, they’re in TROY ounces). About 1 million pounds, split between the land owner and the metal-detector-hobbyist!
A theory is being floated that an Anglo-Saxon ruler buried the trove but could never return for it.
But check the links at the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffordshire_hoard which include the hoard’s official web site. (Does the Golden Hoard have an official web site?)
(Trying to include the one best web link so the message doesn’t go into moderation hell. Nor CJ!)
You and Jane might consider writing down your hoard-adventure short story {in your copious free time…!) and offering it on Closed Circle as a very inexpensive or free download. That way people who are unfamiliar with or uncertain of the downloading process could give it a try.
Yep, there is bound to be a historical on this premise…I’d like to see Cecilia Holland tackle it. She could put names and faces to the likely culprits without cracking a book. 😉
on the news here they were saying it was a warriors hoard, the stone from a sword hilt a trophy, and some of it originated in byzantium.
Byzantium is possible for some of the pieces. Others are Celtic figures, though not as fine as some. They’re saying warrior because it’s horse tack fittings, sword ornamentation, no women’s jewelry, or very little (I haven’t seen all of it). And of course, if the craftsman moves house, Byzantiune technique can come to Staffordshire. 😉 But certainly there is a skill difference in various of the pieces.
The nature of it, however, is why I’m kind of thinking it could have been a grave robbery of somebody very important, and somebody died running off with it, or they’d have been back. But the people who did him in didn’t know where the loot was, or they’d have gotten it. Interesting. I haven’t seen any heraldic symbology to speak of (beyond the Christian) in the jewelry, that might pin down a region, except the Celtic ‘gripping beasts’, which don’t seem to be any kind in particular…on the other hand, while the Romans used identifying ‘mascots’, I don’t know if the people in this area did.
This is way before the Norman invasion. The Angles and Saxons were arguing over territory. Among others. My geography gets hazy, but the kings of Wessex (central England) were major figures. There was also an influx of prominent Irish out of Munster; and then the Hengist and Horsa batch, twin Saxon brothers who decided Britain would be a good annex: they came in, I think, in the south. Not to mention the Viking set up at York (NW). It’s where fantasy meets the dark ages head-on.
‘Setting off to seek your fortune’ in the way of the old fairy tales has kind of a dark side in this period. Papa’s got the land, elder brother’s going to inherit, and you need to take your sword and go carve out another kingdom.
Wild and dangerous times, those, and a little grave-robbing came under the ‘treasure quest’ clause if it wasn’t your people’s tomb you were raiding.
Then I guess they weren’t a stash of jewels Parsynan had hidden in case he needed to “bug out” of Henas Amef.
IIRC, there were quite a bit of doings at Eboracum, even before the Vikings arrived as just another bunch in a long list of people who found the area to their liking. The Romans originally founded it as a city(?)/fortress(?)/staging area(?) for their army in Brittania, sort of to keep an eye on Hadrian’s Wall, and to be there as ready response should the mad highlanders manage to scale the wall.
One thinks about how farmers divide their farms among the many sons they had to help with the work around the farm. Kind of like King Lear, not to mention having to carve out your own kingdom?