Staffordshire hoard

[Caballo]

Clearly its great news that the cash has been saved and that it won't be dispersed into private hands, but shouldn't a find of such national and international importance be displayed at the British Museum, so that more vistors from home and abroad can see it and compare it with other treasures such as Sutton Hoo?
I know there is a risk of sounding London centric, but I fear that in 5 years time very few people will make the journey to Staffordshire to see this fantastic find.

Staffordshire Hoard saved for the West Midlands

23 March 10 15:45

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The Staffordshire Hoard is to remain in the West Midlands after the £3.3m purchase price was met.

The Anglo Saxon treasure was found in a field in Staffordshire by a metal-detecting enthusiast last July.

A National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) grant of £1.285m has been added to money raised by a campaign involving Stoke and Birmingham councils.

The Memorial Fund grant stops the collection from being divided up and sold to private collectors.

Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of NHMF, said: "The Staffordshire Hoard is an extraordinary heritage treasure.

"It is exactly the sort of thing the National Heritage Memorial Fund was set up to save."

The haul, described as the UK's largest find of Anglo-Saxon treasure, comprises 1,600 items including sword pommels, helmet parts and processional crosses.

In total, it is made up 5kg of gold and 1.3kg of silver and is thought to date from the seventh century.

Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent city councils and The Art Fund said they had jointly donated £500,000 and last month the fund received £50,000 from a mystery benefactor.

School children have also been among members of the public who have made donations.

Now the target has been reached, the NHMF said a further extra £1.7m is now needed to ensure the collection can be properly conserved, studied and displayed.

More than 40,000 visitors saw the haul when it went on show at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in September.

The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, in Stoke-on-Trent, had to close queues to visitors early due to the popularity of the display in February.

'Overwhelming response'

The value of the treasure was set by a committee of experts.

The money will be split between Terry Herbert, 55, of Burntwood, in Staffordshire, who found it, and Fred Johnson, who owns the farm where it was discovered.

The campaign to raise the £3.3m was launched on 13 January by celebrity historian Dr David Starkey.

He said: "The Staffordshire Hoard provides us with vital clues to our ancient past and now we can set about decoding them.

"I'm delighted that all the other funding bodies and the generous public have helped save these breathtaking treasures for posterity."

Councillor Martin Mullaney, from Birmingham City Council, said: "It is great achievement to secure the hoard for the West Midlands Region.

"I have been overwhelmed by the public response and can't thank enough everyone who has given and supported our campaign in helping us bringing the hoard home."

Items are still on display at The Potteries Museum and at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 18 April.

Last week, archaeologists announced that another dig is to be held at the undisclosed field in Staffordshire.

It is not expected to turn up any more gold, but could reveal how the original items came to be there, they said.

[PhilusEstilius]

I would think that it should stay where it is for if anyone is so interested they will find the time to go see it.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Ahh, that is handy. I am near Birmingham far more frequently than Londinium.... :mrgreen:

[Medicus matt]

For most people in the UK, the Stoke and Birmingham museums are closer than the BM. For overseas visitors, well, those that are really interested will travel to see it, just as I do when I go to other countries.

And Stoke certainly needs something to bring in visitors and generate revenue. I was there in kit for the first day of the recent exhibition and...well...the museum did seem to be the nicest bit of the town...with the cafe around the corner running a close second.

As for being of National/International Importance....is it?
It's nice to have more sword pommels, helmet plates and other bits and bobs to look at and I've spent many hours doing so ( I was looking at hi res scans of the xrayed soil blocks on the day they came out, to see what I could see) but there's nothing really new to be had. the lack of archaeological context means that it can't teach us anything about burial practices in the way that the simplest inhumation does. It doesn't reveal any new manufacturing techniques or artistic styles.

It's brilliant, it's frustrating, it's a lot of things and being all gold and shiny I'm sure it will attract visitor numbers for years to come but I don't think it's as 'important' as, say, a large anglo-saxon cemetary that takes years to excavate and even longer to publish because of a lack of funds.

That being said, I don't begrudge either the time or the money that I have donated to ensure that it didn't have to be sold off piecemeal.

[caiusbeerquitius]

There´s a nice site about the hoard on the net:
[url:2gzkpu5d]http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/[/url]

[Crispvs]

Not living anywhere near London and not having much opportunity to visit the BM most of the time, I agree with Matt's thought on the central position of the Midlands for the majority of the population. People here are still smarting over the narrow minded and stupid decision to rebuild Wembly Stadium at Wembly, rather than the preferred site at Solihull, near the National Exhibition Centre, which would have been accessable by a much greater section of the national population. As people at the time said: if you want a wheel to go round, you don't put the axle through the tyre.

Anyway, that said, I have my own thoughts on the Staffordshire Hoard. I visited the exhibition several times and had several telephone conversations with museum staff and sent several wordy e-mails their way. As my input has yet to appear on the site Christian linked to I shall put a digest of it here. I hope this will be of interest.


Dear Kath,

Further to our telephone conversation earlier today, here are my thoughts on the Staffordshire Hoard. Please take note that I do not have any source information to hand as I write and so what I am writing is without reference to the documentary sources I would normally have to hand.

Firstly, the content of the hoard is significant. There appears to be a complete absence of female items and an unprecidented predominance of sword fittings. This immediately suggests that we are looking at the aftermath of a battle, an activity which would not involve women and which would involve swords. The presence of gold crosses also tells us that one side (presumably the defeated side) was Christian and the other side (who folded the crosses up) almost certainly pagan. There are also a number of items which were on display in the exhibition which were unidentified but to my mind are highly likely to be mounts from Gospel books and reliquaries, both of which might be expected to be carried by the priests who would almost certainly be expected to accompany a Christian king (particularly a recent convert) on a campaign. The gold crosses might have been for portable altars, such as are known to have been used by a number of priests and bishops in that period.

Secondly, the decorative styles featured on the items are significant. The cloisione work on many of the pieces is remeniscent of the Sutton Hoo pieces, but seems the be, if anything, more finely executed, with more and smaller garnets. The Sutton Hoo ship burial is generally believed thease days to date to the late 620s or early 630s, so the quality of the work and the fact that it is featured on so many pieces suggests a later date than Sutton Hoo. The decorative technology which was previously fit for kings is now well enough known that other great men can have this style of decoration as well. In all likelyhood, given the amount of pieces featuring this decoration, it was produced by English craftsmen. Some pieces in the exhibition bore figural decoration which was similar to that from Sutton Hoo, but certain other pieces featured decoration which is very similar to the decoration of one of the 'carpet' pages of the Book of Durrow, which is generally thought to have been made around AD650.

Thirdly, the location of the find is significant. Although the exact location of the find is rightly a closely guarded secret, to my mind there would be good reason for guessing that it was resonably close to the River Trent. If so, this would almost certainly give us close to the exact date of deposition.

In chapter 21 of the Ecclesiastical History, Bede states that in the ninth year of of King Ecgfrith of Northumbria's reign (which would be either 678 or 679) he fought a great battle on the River Trent against King Aethelred of Mercia. He does not tell us anything about this "great" battle except that King Ecgfrith's brother Aefwine was killed, from which we might tentatively infer that the Mercians won the day. This would be supported by the fact that the following year Mercia gained control of Lindsey, while Northumbria seems to have remained quiet.
The River Trent was well inside Mercian territory, which tells us that the Northumbrians had invaded Mercia, and the defeated Northumbrians probably fled north towards their own territory. Although we know that Archbishop Theodore achieved a peace settlement and prevented the war from continuing, this cannot have happened until later and in the immediate aftermath of the battle the victorious Mercians would almost certainly have persued the defeated Northumbrians from the field. In such circumstances King Aethelred would have made sure that someone with authority was left behind to scour the battlefield for valuables, which would either be of use or of value later. Usable weapons and equipment would have been salvaged for future use, but broken weapons would have been stripped of useful or valuable fittings. We know from other sources that the quality of sword blades was not as high in this period as most people today would expect, and many sword blades would have broken or become bent during the fighting. The iron from these blades would have been salvaged for recycling, but any precious metal fittings would have been set aside as bullion. This latter point is ably demonstrated by the fact that there is evidence of numerous swords in the hoard by no spears. The spear however, was the predominant weapon in use at the time. The Sutton Hoo ship burial featured one sword but several spears and at the Battle of Brunanburgh as late as 991, the Earl Birhtnoth had killed three men with his spear before even drawing his sword. Therefore if this hoard was representative of the weapons used in the battle we would expect to find at least some evidence of spears. We do not however. The items in the hoard have been collected together precisely because they are items of precious metal. They are bullion. The same applies to the precious mounts which would have decorated the precious books and reliquary caskets which might have been captured. To the Northumbrians and their priests, the value lay in the books themselves and the relics in the caskets but to the pagan and probably illiterate Mercians, the value who have been in the decorations attached to these items. The items themelves were probably discarded, as happened two hundred of so years later, when the Vikings sacked monastaries. Heavily decorated gold English book mounts have been found in Scandanavia reused as brooches. All this silver and gold material would have been collected together from the battlefield spoil by a high ranking Mercian to be hidden somewhere safe for King Aethelred.

We know from the poem Beowulf, which was certainly being told at this time, that a good king needed to protect his people, set an example as a fearless and valiant leader in war, and reward the loyalty of the warriors who accompanied him. To my mind, the Staffordshire hoard is booty from the defeated Northumbrians which has been collected up in order that King Aethelred could then distribute it to his loyal warriors, either in the form of straight bullion or as rich ornament for their weapons and equipment. It would have to have been a trusted royal official who supervised the collection and burial of the hoard as the king would not want to run the risk of the booty being stolen by a less trustworthy person.
We can only guess at why the hoard was not collected. It may be that having hidden the hoard, the official and his men then headed off to join the rest of the army in pursuit of the Northumbrians and were killed in one of the many skirmishes which would probably have occurred of the next few days, thus taking with them the secret of where the hoard was hidden, or then again it may have something to do with the peace deal brokered by Archbishop Theodore. Then again the reason could be something else entirely. However, we can be reasonably sure that it was the Mercians who deposited it, partly because of the presence of Christian items as bullion and partly because it was buried so deeply inside Mercia, not to mention the probability that the invading Northumbrians were defeated and so would not have had the opportunity to gather the spoils of the battlefield, which we see so graphically being done on the Bayeaux Tapestry.

One final point about the battlefield. On a battlefield we might expect to find evidence of mass graves such as the mass grave found some years ago from the Battle of Taunton. However, the hoard may have been taken some distance from the battlefield in order to better hide it and even if it was not, soil conditions might not allow for the survival of the bones or alternately, the Northumbrian bodies may not even have been buried. This was certainly the case after the Battle of Stanford Bridge. The English dead were proeperly buried but the Viking dead were left to rot where they lay. Human bones were still to be seen lying about the area many dacades later.

Well, this has been a long e-mail. Doubtless I will think of several things which I have ommitted to mention here and so I will probably send a somewhat shorter follow-up e-mail some time in the next few days.

In the meantime, I hope I may have contributed something new to what has already been found out about the hoard. As stated on the telephone, I would be interested to know about the method of deposition, if known. A box might leave traces, whereas a bag or items utilised to act as bags might not.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please pass it on to David Symons when he gets back. I would be interested in hearing his thoughts on what I have said here.

Dear Kath,

This is just a quick addendum to yesterday's e-mail.

(Edit)

Secondly small note on names. Some of the names I mentioned are sometimes written in different forms. For example Ecgfrith's name is sometimes spelt 'Ecgfrid' and 'Aethelred' is sometimes spelt 'Ethelred' or 'Athelred'.

This confusion arises from the fact that Old English used three dipthong letters which have fallen out of use in recent centuries. These letters were the 'ash', the 'eth' and the 'thorn'.

The 'ash' looked like an 'a' and an 'e' stuck together and had approximately the sound modern linguistics represents with an upside down 'a'. As this letter is no longer used, words and names which were originally spelt with it are now spelt with 'a', 'e' or 'ae'.

The 'eth' looked, in its upper case, like a capital 'D' with a horizontal bar through the upstroke and in its lower case, like a lower case 'd' with an inward curving upstroke which was crossed by a horizontal bar. This made the hard 'th' sound, found in words like 'path' and 'thing'. Sometimes this letter is mis-transcribed as a 'd', hence 'Ecgfrith' being written as 'Ecgfrid', 'Girth' (brother of King Harold) as 'Gird' and 'Harthecnut' (King and son of King Cnut) as 'Hardecnut'.

The 'thorn' looked, in its upper case, like a cpital 'Y' with a horizontal bar through its upstroke, and in its lower case, like a lower case 'b' whose upstroke continued on below the line like that os a 'p'. This letter indicated the soft 'th' sound, found in words like 'them' and 'rather'. This letter also often causes confusion when transcribed, hence the well known but anacronistic 'Ye olde shoppe' in reality the 'Y' of 'Ye' would originally have been a capital thorn and it should really be transcribed as 'The olde shoppe'.

Although these three dipthong letters with their bars have disappeared from English, we do still have one remaining dipthong letter which is indicated by a bar, in the letter 'Q' which as we all know, is normally written as a capital 'O' crossed by a bar. 'Q' of course indicates a 'kw' sound, but then, we all know that one already, even these days.

Sorry that this has been such a diversion but I hope it was of some interest.

Dear Kath,

I thought I would e-mail you again with some of my observations from the exhibition of the selection of the hoard which was displayed in the BMAG.

Firstly, a suggestion for a possible interpretation. The two small gold snakes were unaccounted for. Their purpose is of course unknown, but it has occurred to me that the Northumbrians, who had presumably owned these objects, although Christian, were recent converts and it seems entirely possible (if not probable) that many men would have continued some pagan practices. One of these would have been the practice of carrying amulets and charms. This may well be what the snakes are. It might also be worth remembering that snakes were associated with the Germanic god Woden, who despite not being the god of war (which was Tew) did still have some warrior attributes. It may be significant here that dancing warriors shown on the Sutton Hoo helmet and some of the Valsgarde helmets have what appear to be snake-headed 'horns' emerging from the sides of their helmets.
Who knows how many amulets and charms which might have been made of less valuable materials might originally have been present on the battlefield?

Secondly, I noticed a number of problems with the labelling of some of the artifacts. The printed material talked of "swords and daggers" but I know of no evidence for the use of daggers by the Anglo-Saxons, unless of course the writers were actually meaning scrameseaxes, and simply using an inappropriate word. Scrameseaxes would certainly have been present and I believe that the exhibition did indeed show evidence for them. The scrameseax was, of course, a single edged chopping weapon, and surviving examples can be as big as a large chef's knife (or even slightly bigger).

In part of the display a group of oval pieces of gold were labelled as 'sword guards'. This is only partially correct. Those featuring long rectangular slots are almost certainly mouth plates from sword scabbards. The long slots are to facilitate the insertion of the sword blade into the scabbard. The pieces with the smaller 'squarer' holes were probably from sword handles and would have acted as 'striker plates' (the parts of the sword handle which actually rests against the top of the scabbard). The smaller holes in these pieces were to accommodate the tang of the sword which would then pass along the inside of the handle before being 'peened over' to secure it (the decorative cap which formed the very end of the sword pommel would be fixed over this to hide the riveted-over end of the tang). One of the scabbard mouth plates featured a long triangular slot, demonstrating that it was from a sheath meant for a single edged weapon, probably a scameseax.
A flattened tubular piece of gold featuring decoration similar to that found in parts of the Book of Durrow was described as being from a sword scabbard but it seemed too small to have come from a sword scabbard. A scabbard would have been made primarily of wood and covered in leather. Any metal fittings would have to be big enough to fit over the rest of the scabbard which would itself have to be big enough to accommodate a sword blade. The fact that this piece seems too small for this suggests that it was from the sheath of a smaller weapon, perhaps a small or medium sized scrameseax.

A small, very thick piece of gold, perforated with a central hole and heavily inlaid with garnets was described as being from a sword of dagger handle. This could not have been the case however, as the hole in this piece is far too small to accommodate the thickness of tang which would be required of a weapon if it were not to break in combat. To my mind it seems most probable that this piece is part of the handle of a small (but expensive) eating knife or something similar belonging to the king or one of his nobles, which would not expect to be subject to the rough treatment a weapon would be subject to. I would suggest that this piece would be at the end of the handle next to the blade, although it is possible that the handle of the knife might have featured alternating bands of different materials, making its relative position less sure.

Unsurprisingly, the blades of the swords, along with those of the spears and axes which would certainly also have been present are missing, as they were made of what would be considered a 'base metal' suitable only for recycling into new weapons or tools. To understand the hoard though it is worth remembering that these would all have been present before the precious metals were stripped from them and collected together as bullion.

I hope this have been of some interest. If I have any further thoughts I will e-mail these to you as I find the opportunity.

Yours sincerely

Paul Geddes


Crispvs

[Medicus matt]

My own opinion, based on studying the finds and experience in manufacturing and dissasembling sword hilts is that the hilts were not taken apart in the field. If they'd been subjected to a hasty disassembly in unskilled hands, the soft gold components would most likely have been torn or hacked off. As it is, the pommel caps were obviously removed by removal of the rivets themselves rather than being bashed at. Same with the very thin hilt plates.

More likely, I believe, that IF they are taken from weapons of the vanquished, it was done in a workshop by skilled hands.

It's also a big step to assume that they all came form one battle. The hoard could have been accumulated over several years, or even decades. We don't know when or why these items were buried together. It might represent a long period of wealth accumulation.

It's even a bit of a leap to assume that they're war loot at all. We know that sword blades were rehilted and that a sword was often given as a gift to be returned to the giver on the death or retirement of the recipient.
I don't think it's too much of a step to deduce that the hilt components may have been removed from an old sword that the hlaford was planning on giving to a new hearth companion, adding the precious items to his own treasury.


All supposition of course, always will be I suspect but the evidence doesn't bear out any idea of them having been ripped from the weapons.

What's a scramaseax Paul? :wink:

[Rumo]

This confusion arises from the fact that Old English used three dipthong letters which have fallen out of use in recent centuries. These letters were the 'ash', the 'eth' and the 'thorn'.

The 'ash' looked like an 'a' and an 'e' stuck together and had approximately the sound modern linguistics represents with an upside down 'a'. As this letter is no longer used, words and names which were originally spelt with it are now spelt with 'a', 'e' or 'ae'.

The 'eth' looked, in its upper case, like a capital 'D' with a horizontal bar through the upstroke and in its lower case, like a lower case 'd' with an inward curving upstroke which was crossed by a horizontal bar. This made the hard 'th' sound, found in words like 'path' and 'thing'. Sometimes this letter is mis-transcribed as a 'd', hence 'Ecgfrith' being written as 'Ecgfrid', 'Girth' (brother of King Harold) as 'Gird' and 'Harthecnut' (King and son of King Cnut) as 'Hardecnut'.

The 'thorn' looked, in its upper case, like a cpital 'Y' with a horizontal bar through its upstroke, and in its lower case, like a lower case 'b' whose upstroke continued on below the line like that os a 'p'. This letter indicated the soft 'th' sound, found in words like 'them' and 'rather'. This letter also often causes confusion when transcribed, hence the well known but anacronistic 'Ye olde shoppe' in reality the 'Y' of 'Ye' would originally have been a capital thorn and it should really be transcribed as 'The olde shoppe'.

Although these three dipthong letters with their bars have disappeared from English, we do still have one remaining dipthong letter which is indicated by a bar, in the letter 'Q' which as we all know, is normally written as a capital 'O' crossed by a bar. 'Q' of course indicates a 'kw' sound, but then, we all know that one already, even these days.

Sorry that this has been such a diversion but I hope it was of some interest.

Paul, as far as I know, diphthongs are two vowels (actually a vowel and a semivowel) joined in a glide (e.g. day, loud, fight, etc.)

[Crispvs]

Matt,

Good points, but I would have thought that a king on campaign would take as part of his retinue exactly the sort of craftsmen you are talking about, as weapons would inevitably need repair at times along a campaign. It was also common practice in most pre-modern armies to travel with a mobile field forge of some sort and it is not too far a jump from there to imagine a travelling workshop of some sort. After all, what would the craftsman really need? A workbench, tools and a small cart or draft animal to carry them on would about do it I would have thought. So the fact that the hoard would have required the services of a skilled craftsman to reach its present form does not in any way prelude, in my opinion, the possibility that the hoard is the result of a single event and the scenario I have proposed would not require the parts to be 'ripped' from their weapons.
In support of it being from the battle I proposed are its location close to the River Trent and the fact that overtly Christian objects have been treated with indifference to their religious significance. We KNOW that a battle was fought in that general location in either AD678 or AD679, which Bede describes as a "great battle", indicating it was a significant battle involving a large number of warriors. Bede does not actually say who won but he strongly implies that it was the Mercians under King Aethelred. Being a Northumbrian and a monk, Bede would not probably not have wished to make too much of his Christian kingdom's defeat by a Pagan kingdom, but as a historian he does not misrepresent the facts, he just keeps his description as brief as possible and dwells on the human aspect of the effect of the death of Aelfwine and the miraculous story of the man who had survived the battle and who could not be chained up. We know also that over the next few years the Mercian kingdom increased it power over more of England and Mercia adopted Christianity, whilst Northumbria went into decline and succession problems lad to the temporary breakup of the kingdom, possibly as a result of the loss of a significant number of high ranking Northumbrians in the battle of 678-9. Therefore, the hoard must date to sometime after c650 (based on the decorative styles employed) and before c684
The fact that Christian crosses which probably originally accompanied a portable altar similar to that of St Cuthbert, have simply been folded up (presumably to save space) and gold and inlaid decorations torn from (I would assume from their size and form) Gospel books and reliquaries (all these items would have been present with the priests who would undoubtedly have accompanied the recently converted Ecgfrith on campaign), strongly suggests that the deposit relates to a victory of a pagan army over a (at least nominally) Christian one. The only candidates for this, given that the decoration of the pieces suggests that most were manufactured in the middle of the seventh century or slightly later, are Northumbria and Mercia.
This, therefore gives us a narrow range of dates for the deposition of the hoard and the fact that the hoard contains only items which may reasonably be thought to have been present at a battle strongly points to the battle in 678-9. In the early 670s Mercia had invaded Northumbria and had been roundly beaten. The 678-9 Northumbrian invasion of Mercia was presumably in revenge for this invasion. If the hoard had been collected over a period of time, it would be likely that some other objects such as items of jewellery or cups and silver plate might have found their way into it. Therefore, its composition points, in my mind, to the hoard having been collected together on a single occasion. There is nothing in it, after all which would not be likely to be present at a battle.

"What's a scramaseax Paul?"

This:
http://personal.ars-informatica.ca/paul ... ramasx.gif


Rumo,

You may be correct about the proper use of the word 'dipthong' but my point was to point out that there were letters representing more than one individual letter which have fallen out of use and which thus cause confusion to the correct pronunciation of certain words and names, leading to modern spellings which do not reflect the way these words and names were actually pronounced.

Crispvs

[Caballo]

Thanks Frater Crispus and Matt- those are the best explanations I have yet seen of the hoard- fantastic. Looking forward to seeing more oi both the hoard and the analysis!

[Medicus matt]

"What's a scramaseax Paul?"

This:
http://personal.ars-informatica.ca/paul ... ramasx.gif

No, those are seaxes. Sorry, didn't use the 'being sarky' emoticon. :wink:
Nobody knows what a scramaseax is. No one still alive anyway.

You may be right that an army on campaign might have a smith of some sort with it...although in a small country where every large community had a smith capable of doing running repiars on weapons would it have been neccessary? If the Danish examples we know of are anything to go by, warriors may well have been equipped to do their own repairs.

I don't know of any evidence that armies of the early Englisc period travelled with a mobile forge.

A lot of people are getting hung up on the supposed mistreatment of christian objects. I dont' see it myself. Mistreatment to my mind would involve some sort of ritual killing. Taking the gems and putting the gold aside form something that's no longer required (either due to degrading condition or it becoming unfashionable) doesn't necessarily mean that the person doing so was non-christian, just practical.
Of course, if, as has been claimed, the lettering on the large cross points to it being of 8th century manufacture, that rather queers the pitch for a 7th century deposition altogether. Jury's still out on that one.

I like your theory Paul, clearly a lot of thought has gone in to it and I'm not saying that you're wrong, any more than you could say that my theory is. Both make use of what little evidence there is and extrapolate on it but neither can be proved.
We may both be wrong....to be honest I doubt very much if we'll ever know...although analysis of the very few organic remains found with the hoard and of some of the soil within the objects themselves may reveal more in terms of deposition dates.

Oh, and apparently a lot of the gold content came originally from the eastern empire. No surprises there really.

[Crispvs]

Matt,

I am not suggesting that the crosses were deliberately mistreated. I am simply saying that they were treated with casual disregard for their religious significance. If I am right in my identification of the various decorated gold strips as book mounts and reliquary box mounts this also supports the idea of casual disregard for the religious significance and has a direct correllation with the fact that fragments of English book mounts have turned up in Scandanavia reused as brooches as a result of pagan viking raiders taking what they saw as valuable from books during raids in the late eighth century. To the priests, the valuable things were the books and the relics, which they therefore adorned with rich decoration to befit their significance a holy objects, whereas to the still pagan and possibly illiterate Mercians, the value would have lain in the gold decoration itself and not pieces of bone, wood or parchment they could not use, although they may possibly have recognised that they had significance for the Northumbrians. They may have deliberately disposed of the relics, as belief in the power of charms, spells and talismans was widespread at the time.
I agree with you that people seem too hung up on the treatment of the crosses. It is just that it is these objects which tell us one single significant fact about the hoard - that it was assembled by a pagan hand not a Christian one. It is true that there are many other conclusions to be drawn from the hoard and like you I look froward to the results of the soil analysis to shed more light on the context.

Regarding the lettering, I believe debate still rages over when English scribes started using uncial and half uncial letter forms. It is often stated that they originally copied late Roman letter forms, but surely that is exactly what uncial letters are or are directly descended from.

Crispvs

[Medicus matt]

Matt,
If I am right in my identification of the various decorated gold strips as book mounts and reliquary box mounts this also supports the idea of casual disregard for the religious significance

All of the decorated gold strip that I have seen so far looks like the sort of fluted strip you find covering the joins between pressblech panels on helmets, such as you see on the SH or numerous Vendel/Valsgarde helms.

I agree with you that people seem too hung up on the treatment of the crosses. It is just that it is these objects which tell us one single significant fact about the hoard - that it was assembled by a pagan hand not a Christian one.

Fact?
No, I cant' agree with you there. It supports the theory that the hoard may have been assembled by non-Christians, but it doesn't prove it.

[Crispvs]

Matt,

"All of the decorated gold strip that I have seen so far looks like the sort of fluted strip you find covering the joins between pressblech panels on helmets, such as you see on the SH or numerous Vendel/Valsgarde helms."

I had thought of that too, but most of the pieces seem too thick and wide for this, as well as some being of L-section, thus reducing the possibility, in my mind, that they might be helmet parts. In addition at least one piece was 'Y' shaped, with the single strip dividing into two strips of equal thickness to the single strip, which led me to feel that this was probably a reliquary mount, probably from one end of the lid.

http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/blknow13.htm

http://www.conques.com/visite29.htm

Of course, that does not prove the identification, but I think it quite likely.

I accept your point about the treatment of these objects not proving beyond doubt that the hoard was deposited by pagan hands, but whilst that may be the case, deposition by pagans rather than Christians is by far the most likely scenario.

Crispvs

[Epictetus]

Staffordshire hoard site yields further 90 fragments

They say this is part of a helmet: