'Oldest' Iron Age gold work in Britain found in Staffordshire

BBC

Two friends have unearthed jewellery which could be the oldest Iron Age gold discovered in Britain.

Mark Hambleton, who went back to metal detecting after advice from his late father, made the find with Joe Kania, on Staffordshire Moorlands farmland.

The three necklaces and bracelet are believed to be about 2,500 years old.

 Their find was declared treasure at an inquest led by coroner Ian Smith, who joked it was likely to be "worth a bob or two".

Julia Farley, of the British Museum, described the discovery, called the Leekfrith Iron Age Torcs, as a "unique find of international importance".

Dr Farley, the museum's curator of British and European Iron Age collections, said: "It dates to around 400-250 BC and is probably the earliest Iron Age gold work ever discovered in Britain.

"The torcs were probably worn by wealthy and powerful women, perhaps people from the Continent who had married into the local community.

 "Piecing together how these objects came to be carefully buried in a Staffordshire field will give us an invaluable insight into life in Iron Age Britain."

 The four torcs were found separately, about 1m apart, buried near the surface in Leekfrith last December.

The location is almost 50 miles away from where the £3m Anglo Saxon Staffordshire Hoard was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast in 2009.

The inquest heard the torcs' gold content was at least 80%, with each piece weighing between 230g (8oz) and 31g (1oz), prompting Mr Smith to say: "Even as scrap, that's still worth a bob or two."

A formal valuation will now take place at the British Museum.

To be declared treasure, an item must be more than 300 years old, or have a precious metal content greater than 10%.

"This must rank as one of the most exciting treasure finds I have ever dealt with - not quite in the same league as the Staffordshire Hoard, but nevertheless exciting," Mr Smith said.

 Mr Hambleton said he was just about to give up for the day when his friend said he thought he had found something.

"He pulled this big torc out of his pocket, and dangled it in front of me," he said.

"When I'd got some air back into my lungs, my head had cleared and my legs had stopped wobbling, I said 'do you realise what you've found there?"'

He said the pair were "speechless".

He said he kept the gold next to his bed that night "to make sure it was safe" before handing it to experts the following day.

The jewellery was handed to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is administered by Birmingham Museums, but will be displayed at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke for the next three weeks.

The friends said they would share any proceeds with landowner Stuart Heath.

Now confirmed as treasure, the haul is the property of the Crown. The Treasure Valuation Committee will offer a value to the finders, landowner and any museum wanting to acquire it.

Once all parties agree, the museum has to raise the money to pay them.

Saxon butter churn found in Staffordshire sheds light on life in Mercian Kingdom

 

Ancient Origins

Archaeologists working on the site of a rail improvement project in the UK have discovered the lid of a butter churn from the Saxon period.
The discovery of a wooden object at Norton Bridge, reported in the Staffordshire Newsletter, was made on the site of a new flyover currently being constructed by Network Rail along with 11 new bridges. The work is being carried out in order to remove a bottleneck on the busy West Coast Main Line.
The artifact was discovered among the remains of worked wooden stakes and wood chips on waterlogged peat near Meece Road, just south of Yarnfield in Staffordshire. Radiocarbon tests have dated the wooden lid to 715 to 890 AD when the area was part of the Saxon kingdom of Mercia. The results show that the artifact is roughly the same age as the famous Staffordshire Hoard, the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold found anywhere in the world.

The Staffordshire Hoard, discovered in a field in Hammerwich, near Lichfield in July 2009, is perhaps the most important collection of Anglo-Saxon objects found in England. 2009, David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. (en.wikipedia.org)

Archaeologists originally believed the lid to be far older, as evidence of prehistoric occupation has been discovered nearby. Furthermore, no pottery or other metalwork was found on the site, which could have helped to date the artifact. Dr Emma Tetlow of Headland Archaeology said she was delighted by the find as precious little evidence of the Mercian kingdom has been discovered in the UK so far. Wooden artifacts and other organic evidence from the Saxon period are very rare indeed.
“During this period this part of Staffordshire was part of the Mercian heartland and was populated by a pagan tribe called the Pencersaete” said Dr Tetlow. “Existing knowledge of this period for the north and east of the Midlands and the UK in general is very scarce, so this find is fantastic and of regional significance.”
Dr Tetlow said that the climate of the area at that time would not have been too different from that experienced by people in the UK today as the country was becoming affected by dynamic climate change at the start of what is now known as the ‘Medieval Warm Period’. This was a short climatic interval that is thought to have taken place roughly between 900 and 1300 AD, predominantly affecting the Northern Hemisphere. The Pencersaete would therefore have had to endure unsettled and stormy weather including flooding and a general increase in temperature.

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Map of England showing where Mercia was located in the 700-late 800’s. (Wikimedia Commons)

Butter churns were containers, looking much like a wooden barrel, used to convert cream into butter. They had a hole in the lid through which a pole was inserted. This was then used to agitate the cream in order to disrupt the milk fat, the membranes of which break down thereby creating lumps called butter grains. These join with each other to form larger globules and when the air is forced out of them the mixture becomes buttermilk. Constant and continued churning forces the globules together to form butter. Consumption of butter can be traced as far back as 2000 BC.

Butter churning equipment with all the features for churning, storing, and processing. At the Beskid Museum in Wisła. Photo by Piotrus, 2008. (Wikimedia Commons)

The archaeologists intend holding an information day when members of the public can view the finds and discuss them with Dr Tetlow and her colleagues. Dr Tetlow is also planning to write a paper on the discovery for the Stafford and Mid-Staffs Archaeological Society.
Mercia was one of the seven great kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, the other kingdoms being East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex. It was ruled from a capital at Tamworth and expanded rapidly during the 6^th and 7^th centuries, becoming one of the ‘big three’ kingdoms alongside Northumbria and Wessex. The first ruler of Mercia was King Icel (515-535 AD) and the last was Queen AElfwynn (918 AD) who was deposed by King Edward the Elder of Wessex when he rode into the kingdom and conquered it. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions this episode, commenting that “the daughter of Æthelred, lord of the Mercians, was deprived of all dominion over the Mercians, and carried into Wessex, three weeks before mid-winter; she was called Ælfwynn.” Mercia reached its strongest point during the rule of King Offa when the kingdom dominated much of central England.

King Offa of Mercia from the Benefactors Book of St. Alban's Abbey. C1380. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Pencersaete took their name from the Penk Valley, named after a hill near Penkridge. They are named in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 849 describing the area of Cofton Hackett in the Lickey Hills, south of the present city of Birmingham. This region formed the boundary between the Pencersaete and their neighbors, the Tomsaete.
Featured Image: Butter Churn from the Saxon Period, found at Norton Bridge.

Staffordshire hoard: experts piece together rare warrior's helmet

 

A reconstructed helmet band, depicting a frieze of warriors, which was found as part of the Staffordshire hoard. Photograph: Birmingham museums trust/PA

 

Anglo-Saxon headgear reconstructed from more than 1,500 pieces as £400,000 grant is announced to fund further work on the treasure

The Guardian

More than 1,500 scraps of silver gilt foil from the Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure, including strips stamped with designs of warriors and beasts and other fragments the size of a fingernail, are being pieced together by archaeologists and conservators into a warrior’s helmet of international importance – as it is one of only five ever found.
With years of conservation and research remaining, Historic England will announce a £400,000 grant on Tuesday to fund the continuing study of the largest hoard of Anglo Saxon precious metal work ever found. It was discovered by a metal detector in 2010 in Staffordshire farmland before another 90 pieces were recovered from the same field three years later.

Staffordshire hoard site yields further 90 fragments

Gold and garnet cross and eagle-shaped mount among latest items unearthed by archaeologists in Hammerwich field          

           

Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent councils, joint owners of the hoard, are trying to raise an additional £120,000 towards the project, which will include an online catalogue of the complete hoard by 2017.
“Until we started fitting the pieces together we weren’t even quite sure that we had a helmet, but we are now certain that we have most of it,” said Pieta Greaves, coordinator of the conservation team at the Birmingham museum. “We are missing some pieces including the iron frame, but we should end up with an academically respectable guestimate of what it could have looked like. I think some form of reconstruction will prove feasible.”
The helmet would have dazzled when new, set with bands of precious metal and golden intricately decorated pieces covering the ears.
“We’re missing bits that we see on the Sutton Hoo helmet, like the eyebrow and face protectors, but we have the ear pieces, most of the cap and the crest. What we have is the valuable bits, the stripped out silver and gold – it may be that somebody else got a bag full of base metal to melt down,” Greaves said.
The hoard is unique in that it consists entirely of male ornament and decorative weapon fittings – “warrior bling” as one archaeologist put it – and a few Christian pieces that may have been wrenched off bibles or reliquaries. Among more than 4,000 pieces nothing has been identified that was made for a woman.

 

A detail of the front of the reconstructed sword pommel. Photograph: Birmingham Museums Trust/PA

The meticulous cleaning and study of even the tiniest pieces has also identified a unique sword pommel, which was among more than 70 examples in the hoard, that combines Irish and British styles, and materials including gold, silver, garnet, glass and deliberately blackened silver niello work.

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Chris Fern, the project archaeologist, said the skill of the workmanship was thrilling and the pommel a truly exciting object. “It combines multiple different styles of ornament, much in the same way as the earliest seventh-century illuminated manuscripts do, like the Book of Durrow. It suggests the coming together of Anglo-Saxon and British or Irish high cultures.”
Greaves said the pommel was the only piece to combine so many materials: “It’s as if the craftsman was showing off, saying look at me, look at what I can really do.”
The gallery for the hoard opened in October by Birmingham city museum has had more than 110,000 visitors. Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: “Since its discovery in 2009, the Staffordshire hoard and the stories behind it have captured the public imagination.”