Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found in Staffordshire

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  A harvest of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of one expert, has poured out of a Staffordshire field - the largest hoard of gold from the period ever found.
  

The gold includes spectacular gem studded pieces decorated with tiny interlaced beasts, which were originally the ornamentation for Anglo-Saxon swords of princely quality: the experts would judge one a spectacular discovery, but the field has yielded 84 pommel caps and 71 hilt collars, a find without precedent.

The hoard has just officially been declared treasure by a coroner's inquest, allowing the find which has occupied every waking hour of a small army of experts to be made public at Birmingham City Museum, where all the pieces have been brought for safe keeping and study.

The find site is not being revealed, in case the ground still holds more surprises, even though archaeologists have now pored over every inch of it without finding any trace of a grave, a building or a hiding place.

The field is now under grass, but had been ploughed deeper than usual last year by the farmer, which the experts assume brought the pieces closer to the surface. Herbert reported it as he has many previous small discoveries to Duncan Slarke, the local officer for the portable antiquities scheme, which encourages metal detectorists to report all their archaeological finds. Slarke recalled: "Nothing could have prepared me for that. I saw boxes full of gold, items exhibiting the very finest Anglo-Saxon workmanship. It was breathtaking."

As archaeologists poured into the field, along with experts including a crack metal detecting scheme from the Home Office who normally work on crime scene forensics, Herbert brought one friend sworn to secrecy to watch, but otherwise managed not to breath a word to anyone – even the fellow members of his metal detecting society when they boasted of their own latest finds.

None of the experts, including a flying squad from the British Museum shuttling between London and Birmingham, has seen anything like it in their lives: not just the quantity, but the dazzling quality of the pieces have left them groping for superlatives.

They are still arguing about the date some of the pieces were made, the date they went into the ground, and the significance of most seemingly wrenched off objects they originally decorated. There are three Christian crosses, but they were folded up as casually as shirt collars. A strip of gold with a biblical inscription was also folded in half: it reads, in occasionally misspelled Latin, "Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate the be driven from thy face."

Kevin Leahy, an expert on Anglo-Saxon metal who originally trained as a foundry engineer, and who comes from Burton-on-Trent, has been cataloguing the find and describes the craftsmanship as "consummate", but the make up of the hoard as unbalanced.

"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 ere. The vast majority of items in the hoard are martial - war gear, especially sword fittings."

If the date of between AD650 and AD750 is correct, it is too early to blame the Vikings, and just too early for the most famous local leader, Offa of Offa's Dyke fame.

Leahy said he was not surprised at the find being in Staffordshire, the heartland of the "militarily aggressive and expansionist" 7th century kings of Mercia including Penda, Wulfhere and Æthelred. "This material could have been collected by any of these during their wars with Northumbria and East Anglia, or by someone whose name is lost to history. Here we are seeing history confirmed before our eyes."

Deb Klemperer, head of local history collections at the Potteries museum, and an expert on Saxon Staffordshire pottery, said: "My first view of the hoard brought tears to my eyes – the Dark Ages in Staffordshire have never looked so bright nor so beautiful."

The most important pieces will be on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from tomorrow until Tuesday October 13, and will then go to the British Museum for valuation – a process which will involve another marathon collaboration between experts. Their best guess today is "millions".

Leahy, who still has hundreds of items to add to his catalogue, has in the past excavated several Anglo-Saxon sites including a large cemetery of clay pots full of cremated bone. He said: "After all those urns I think I deserve the Staffordshire find."

Mysteries of Mercia

It is no longer politically correct to refer to the period as the dark ages – but Anglo-Saxon England remains a shadowy place, with contradictory and confusing sources and archaeology. Yet out of it came much that is familiar in modern Britain, including its laws, its parish boundaries, a language that came to dominate the world, as well as metalwork and manuscript illumination of dazzling intricacy and beauty.

Mercia was one of Britain's largest and most aggressive kingdoms, stretching from the Humber to London, its kings and chieftains mounting short but ferocious wars against all their neighbours, and against one another: primogeniture had to wait for the Normans, so it was rare for a king to reign unchallenged and die in his bed.

They were nominally Christian by the date of the Staffordshire hoard, but sources including the Venerable Bede suggest that their faith was based more on opportune alliances than fervour.

In south Staffordshire, at the heart of the kingdom, Tamworth was becoming the administrative capital and Lichfield the religious centre as the cult grew around the shrine of Saint Chad. There were few other towns, and most villages were still small settlements of a few dozen thatched buildings. Travel, if essential, would have been easier by boat: archaeology suggests that much of the Roman road network was decaying, and in many places scrub and forest was taking back land which had been farmed for centuries.

The metalwork in the hoards came from a world very remote from the lives of most people, in mud and wattle huts under thatched roofs, living by farming, hunting, fishing, almost self-sufficient with their own weavers, potters and leather workers, needing to produce only enough surplus to pay dues to the land owner. A failing harvest would have been a far greater disaster than a battle lost or the death of one king and the rise of another.

The world of their nobles is vividly evoked in poems like Beowulf, probably transcribed long after they became familiar as fireside recitations, of summer warfare and winter feasting in the beer hall, where generous gift giving was as important as wealth.

Rich and poor lived in the incomprehensible shadow of a vanished civilisation, the broken cement and stone teeth of Roman ruins studding the countryside, often regarded with dread and explained as the work of giants or sorcerers. One poem in Old English evokes the eerie ruins of a bathing place, possibly Bath itself: "death took all the brave men away, their places of war became deserted places, the city decayed."

It must have been among the epic battles of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia - aristocratic warriors charging into combat draped in their gold and silver finery, surrounded by cadres of brutish guards.

Fourteen hundred years later, on 5 July 2009, unemployed Terry Herbert tramped across familiar fields in Staffordshire, carrying his 14-year-old metal detector. He murmured a prayer in hope of finding something before sunset: "Spirits of yesteryear, take me where the coins appear."

His detector bleeped over a haul of ancient gold and silver so immense that it has been classed the most significant hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever to come to light, exceeding the impact of the legendary Sutton Hoo discovery of 1939, a ship burial site dating from the 7th century.

Mr Herbert's Staffordshire hoard contains 5kg of 7th-century gold and 2.5kg of silver, far surpassing the 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold found at Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge in Suffolk. He uncovered beaded ornaments lying beside 88-per-cent gold artefacts decorated with complex and exquisite animal engravings. Eighty-four bejewelled sword fittings are each believed to be worth in excess of £10,000.

One of the most spectacular pieces in the shimmering haul is a gold strip that carries the biblical Latin inscription: "Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face."

The charm did not save its owner, and was most likely stripped from his corpse after victory.

The artefacts are likely to change our perception of the Dark Ages and rewrite history. Several archaeologists spoke of how they wept when they first viewed them; historians hope that, like Sutton Hoo, it will shed light on a part of England's past that remains caught between myth and historical documentation. "People laugh at metal detectorists," said Mr Herbert yesterday. "I've had people walk past and go 'Beep beep, he's after pennies.' Well no, we are out there to find this kind of stuff and it is out there."

The 55-year-old from Burntwood, Staffs, added: "People have said it [the hoard] is bigger than Sutton Hoo and one expert said it was like finding Tutankhamun's tomb. I just flushed all over when he said that. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, you just never expect this."

Extraordinarily, much of the loot was scattered in - and even atop - the field's top soil, probably disturbed by recent ploughing. The haul was found down to a depth of about 14 inches in an area only 20 yards long. One gold band was found next to a modern 20-pence piece, lately of a farmer's pocket, presumably.

The 1,345 items were officially declared "treasure trove" yesterday by the South Staffordshire Coroner, Andrew Haigh, rendering it property of the Crown. They will be valued by a committee of experts and offered to British museums.

The proceeds will be divided equally between Mr Herbert and the unwitting farmer whose field near Lichfield contained the bounty. Both will become millionaires, although archaeologists hope to keep the farmer's identity secret, lest there be any more Anglo-Saxon gold down there. The discovery guarantees Mr Herbert the bungalow he has always wanted.

Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum's Department of Prehistory and Europe, said the latest treasure "is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, than the Sutton Hoo discoveries". She said that it was "absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells" - referring to the illuminated manuscripts of the four New Testament Gospels dating from the 8th and 9th centuries. There will now follow decades of conjecture and study. In the 7th century, Engand did not yet exist. A number of kingdoms with tribal loyalties vied with one another for control, in a state of pretty much perpetual warfare.

Dr Kevin Leahy, who has been cataloguing the find for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, said it was likely that this was buried by an "incredibly powerful individual or individuals" and that it was probably "war trophies" taken from a battlefield. "All the archaeologists who've worked with it have been awestruck."

Dr Roger Bland, head of portable antiquities and treasure at the British Museum, said: "It is assumed that the items were buried by their owners at a time of danger with the intention of later coming back and recovering them."

Many of the ornate artefacts are related to warfare: crosses and garnet studded gold items that appear to be parts of helmets and sword fittings. Yet others, such as the series of gold snakes, have, for the moment, left experts nonplussed as to their function or ritual meaning. "It will be debated for decades," said Dr Leahy.

The last of the treasures came out of the ground only three weeks ago and none has been cleaned. The still-earth-covered collection is being kept in secure storage at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and a selection of the items will be displayed at the museum from today until 13 October. Deb Klemperer, local history collections officer at The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Staffordshire, which hopes to acquire the treasure along with the area's county council and Birmingham Museum and Gallery, said her first view of the hoard "brought tears to my eyes - the Dark Ages in Staffordshire have never looked so bright nor so beautiful".

Ian Wykes, an archaeologist and leader of Staffordshire County Council's historic team, declared: "For any archaeologist this is the find of a lifetime and reaffirms why you became an archaeologist in the first place."

There is more to come. Fifty-six further clods of earth have been x-rayed and are known to contain metal artefacts; the total number of items is expected to rise to 1,500. Thirty other objects were found and dated to the 20th or 21st centuries.

Mr Herbert said: "I don't know why I said the prayer that day, but I think somebody was listening and directed me to it. This is what metal detectorists dream of, finding stuff like this.

"My mates at the [metal detecting] club always say that if there is a gold coin in a field, I will be the one to find it. I dread to think what they'll say when they hear about this."

Treasure hunt: Previous finds in Britain

* In 1938, the archaeologist Basil Brown discovered the Sutton Hoo ship burial below one of a series of low mounds near Ipswich - perhaps the most magnificent find of its type. The 30m-long oak ship from the 7th century had a burial chamber which contained weapons, armour, gold coins, gold and garnet fittings, silver vessels and silver-mounted drinking horns.

* The Hoxne hoard was also discovered in Suffolk, in 1992, containing more than 15,000 gold and silver coins, gold jewellery and silver tableware - pepper pots, ladles and spoons. Coins show the burial took place after AD407.

* In 1831, kings and queens, knights and bishops carved from walrus ivory and whales' teeth were found in mysterious circumstances on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. Chess was a popular game in the 12th century, whence the pieces date, though this is unlikely to have been known to the cow, who is rumoured to have discovered them, 700 years later.

* Fourth-century silver tableware of outstanding quality was discovered during ploughing at Mildenhall, Suffolk, in 1942. It was made famous four years later by Roald Dahl's non-fiction children's story on the find.

Independent News and Media Limited

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/04/long-last

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