Something Shiny from the Age of Darkness

Photo by David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

In July of 2009 a man with a metal detector went over a farmer’s field in the English Midlands and what he found that day is one of the most significant archeological finds of our young 21st century. Terry Herbert’s discovery is called the Staffordshire Hoard and consists of some 3500 individual small pieces and fragments of mostly gold and garnet with some silver. This treasure, containing 11 pounds of gold, was buried in the late 7th Century A.D. and the intact pieces are almost all fittings for swords and helmets, decorative parts of weapons of war.

And if you are interested in looking at some of this material through the end of February you’ll need to go see the Anglo-Saxon Hoard: Gold from England's the Dark Ages at the National Geographic Society Museum in Washington D.C. There are some one hundred items in the exhibit all small, and some quite beautiful. Many of the gold items are set with garnets, a dark red stone that when polished is stunning. Some of the most exquisite items are the sword or dagger pommels, the small triangular piece that sit on the end of the hilt. Their small red garnets are set in intricately patterned gold designs.

Some of items are just bands or strips of gold with incredibly fine detail. Others have human and animal designs including, fish, snakes and a horse or seahorse design. One of the largest pieces is part of a cheek plate for a helmet. The helmet pieces are extremely rare, only four Anglo-Saxon helmets have ever been found.There are some items whose function is completely mysterious and without the larger piece that they were connected will remain so.  One has a very small round black and white checkerboard design made of glass, which sits on top of a gold and garnet piece.

And then there are three religious items, two crosses, one, made of thin gold which is completely folded up, the other bent and one inscribed gold strip, perhaps something that would attach to a Bible cover, with a biblical verse in Latin, the only item with any writing.

One of the great mysteries of the hoard is why it was buried intentionally. The three main theories are, it was buried after an epic battle or series of battles for safe-keeping, thieves hiding a looted treasure, or perhaps even a pagan ritual of some kind.

The Roman armies left Britain around A.D. 400 which allowed Germanic tribes from the regions of Angeln and Saxony to find new room to grow and expand. Staffordshire, where the hoard was found was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and records indicate that between A.D. 600 and 850 Mercia fought 14 wars with its neighbor Wessex, 11 with the Welsh and 18 with other foes. This was a society almost constantly at war.

           

These items were a parts of prized possessions of an elite warrior class who lived some 1300 years ago, whose language would eventually transform into the one we speak today. But in many respects they remain a mystery to us. Time will tell if this discovery adds to the mystery or helps sort it out. The exhibit runs through March 4.