The Woruldhord Project

We claimed at the time of its discovery that the Staffordshire Hoard would prompt a surge in interest in Anglo-Saxon history. The fruit is apparent already. Oxford University’s Woruldhord Project is asking both members of the public and academics to send in any images, documents, audio and video they have that will further the study of the Anglo-Saxons and Old English, for collection on its website. They are seeking images of buildings, artefacts, readings and interviews, anything that might be relevant. The collection site is open until October 14th and can be accessed here:

http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/woruldhord/

Where Will the Hoard Call Home?

A small but exquisite selection of objects from the Staffordshire Hoard go on temporary public display today in Gallery 37 of the British Museum today.

It coincides with the launch of the Portable Antiquities and Treasure Annual Report 2007, the scheme, unique in Europe, which made possible the acquisition, examination and evaluation of the hoard. The display also includes a number of objects whose discovery was recorded in 2007 including a Roman copper-alloy figure of Cautopates, one of the attendants of the god Mithras, who was popular with Roman soldiers stationed in Britain; selections from the 10th-century Viking Hoard unearthed in the Vale of York, including Carolingian, Islamic and Anglo-Saxon coins; and a medieval silver piedfort – possibly a reckoning counter for officials - from the mid-1350s and struck in the name of Edward III as Duke of Aquitaine.

At the press conference, it was confirmed that the Staffordshire Hoard will find a permanent home in the West Midlands, though such is its size, the British Museum is always likely to have a selection on display. Staff from Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) and the Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent are working on those long-term proposals now. For curators, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, as Rita McLean, Head of Birmingham Museums and Heritage, was eager to stress.

Hill's Handsome Coins

One can’t help thinking of Geoffrey Hill, our greatest living poet, in relation to the Staffordshire Hoard (despite him being a man of Worcestershire). Here’s a particularly resonant passage from his masterly Mercian Hymns:

'Coins handsome as Nero’s; of good substance and weight.
Offa Rex resonant in silver, and the names of his moneyers.
They struck with accountable tact. They could alter the king’s face.

Exactness of design was to deter imitation; mutilation if that failed.
Exemplary metal, ripe for commerce.
Value from a sparse people, scrapers of salt-pans and byres.

Swathed bodies in the long ditch; one eye upstaring.
It is safe to presume, here, the king’s anger.
He reigned 40 years. Seasons touched and retouched the soil.'

More on the Staffordshire Hoard

The more information that emerges about the Staffordshire Hoard, the more remarkable it seems. Two years ago, the British Museum paid £125,000 for an Anglo-Saxon sword handle. There are 310 such parts in the new hoard! Leslie Webster, a former BM curator could, understandably, hardly control his excitement: ‘It will make everyone think again about rising and falling kingdoms, the transition from paganism to Christianity, the conduct of battle and the nature of fine metalwork.’ It appears that some of the objects in the hoard came from as a far away as Byzantium and modern-day Sri Lanka.

The identity of the person responsible for the discovery has been revealed. Terry Herbert, a 55-year-old former coffin maker from Walsall, found the vast hoard using his 14-year-old metal detector on farmland owned by a friend (who has since sold it), believed to be near Lichfield. Mr Herbert and his friend will soon be very wealthy men indeed; the coroner in nearby Cannock declared the find a treasure trove and a committee is currently evaluating its worth. The amount of gold is so large that there are fears it may have a depressive effect on the gold market. Mr Herbert though seems nonplussed, dealing with the media in the typically deadpan delivery of a true Black Countryman. Only once did romance get a hold of him, when he declared that the find was his destiny: ‘I have this phrase,’ he told the assembled throng of the world’s media,’ that I say sometimes, “Spirits of yesteryear take me where the coins appear”, but on that day I changed coins to gold.’ He has changed our understanding of Anglo-Saxon history too.

A sample of the hoard goes on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery today until October 13th. I thoroughly recommend their excellent Edwardian Tea Room.

Duncan Slarke of the Portable Antiquities Scheme was the first archaeologist to see the hoard. An interview is available on the Birmingham News Room website.

A new website devoted to the Staffordshire Hoard has also recently gone live providing images of some of the objects, a history and various interpretations of the find.

Visit our Anglo-Saxon focus page for further information on the period as a whole.

Images: (Staffordshire Hoard website)

- Gold strip with a biblical inscription

- Gold helmet cheek piece

First Impressions: The Staffordshire Hoard

The Staffordshire Hoard, first discovered on private land in July 2009 and now revealed to the world, has gained widespread publicity, much to the delight of scholars of Anglo-Saxon England always keen to publicise their somewhat neglected field. The claim made at the press conference yesterday that it is a ‘treasure that will rewrite history’ appears to be considerably more than hyperbole. It is by far the largest find of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found: 5kg of gold, to be exact, as well as 1.3kg of silver. That’s five times the amount of gold found at Sutton Hoo. One strip of gold bears a Biblical inscription, from the Book of Numbers, in Latin: ‘Surge domine et dissipentur intimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua (Rise up, O Lord and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face). This particular object has already stirred up controversy, with some academics arguing that it dates from eighth or ninth centuries, others saying that the style of lettering suggests the seventh century, a period for which there is sparse material evidence.

Dr Kevin Leahy, the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s National Finds Adviser, has been responsible for cataloguing the find. ‘The two most striking features of the hoard,’ he claims, ‘are that it is unbalanced and it is of exceptionally high quality. Unbalanced because of what we don’t find. There is absolutely nothing feminine. There are no dress fittings, brooches or pendants. The vast majority of items in the hoard are martial.

‘The quantity of the gold is amazing but, more importantly, the craftsmanship is consummate. This was the very best that the Anglo-Saxon metalworkers could do and they were very good. Its origins are clearly the highest levels of Anglo-Saxon aristocracy or royalty.

‘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 successful military career. We 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.’

Prof Helena Hamerow of the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford University, also foresees decades of debate about the nature of the hoard. It’s hard to envisage the context. It appears to date from the time of the Mercian supremacy around the time of Offa, the eighth century, though the objects range across several centuries. They’ve been stripped of their nice bits, which suggest that the metals may have been collected in order to recycle or to be used as bullion. What is really important about this find is that, hitherto, the material evidence of Anglo-Saxon England has never reflected the wealth of the society that is claimed in contemporary documents. Bede, for example, often refers to the magnificence of Anglo-Saxon England, but finds of this kind from that time have been far more common in southern Scandinavia or France. Now, all that has changed. We will now have a much better picture of a very exciting period, when England became part of European culture.

‘The interest in the find is good for Anglo-Saxon studies too,’ says Hamerow. ‘It’s been a long time since Sutton Hoo, and it’s nice to see your subject talked about.’

Even so, that didn’t stop one eminent archaeologist, whose name will remain secret, claim that he would swap the entire find for one Anglo-Saxon document. There’s no pleasing some people.