Staffordshire Hoard

Professor Katherine Smith sends word of an important new discovery in medieval studies.

Historians’ consensus about the past evolves in two main ways: important new sources are discovered, and scholars find new ways of interpreting existing sources. In the field of medieval studies, major discoveries of long-lost sources, be they written or non-written are extremely rare; a scholar working in a European archive might come across a long-lost letter or charter (or, more likely, fragments of texts), while an archaeologist might hope to find scattered bones, potsherds, bits of clothing, or – if he or she is very lucky – a piece of jewelry. Since medievalists’ encounters with the past are often mediated through such fragments, the finding of a whole cache of texts or objects, all in perfect condition, is a rare and tremendously exciting event.

It is no wonder, then, that the discovery this past September of the ‘Staffordshire Hoard,’ a collection of over 1,500 elaborately worked gold and silver objects dating to the seventh and eighth centuries, has become many medievalists’ favorite topic of conversation. (For about a week after the discovery came to light, I felt like wearing a pin that said ‘Ask me about the Staffordshire Hoard,’ and I don’t even work on this time period!)

Why is this such a big deal, you non-medievalists ask? For starters, we know very little about these centuries, smack in the middle of what were long referred to as the ‘Dark Ages.’ Most texts that were written in England during this period have been lost, and those that survive often survive only in later manuscript copies. There are no complete extant buildings from these centuries in England, and there is no agreement about what people’s houses even looked like at this time. This is a world that has been reconstructed by scholars mainly on the basis of a few texts – Bede and Beowulf, along with a handful of others – as well as scattered archaeological evidence. Up to this point, the royal ship-burial at Sutton Hoo, first excavated in 1939, had held pride of place as the richest trove of early Anglo-Saxon objects (including some 4.4 lbs of gold) ever found, but the Staffordshire Hoard (which so far totals 16.5 lbs of gold and silver) promises to tell a story every bit as interesting.

Unraveling this story will undoubtedly take years of study, but a team of archaeologists, art historians, and historians has already begun to develop scenarios to explain why so much treasure was buried in a field some twelve centuries ago. The objects are almost exclusively of a martial nature – including gold sword-fittings, helmet decorations, and shield bosses – and are so exquisite that they were likely the possessions of aristocratic or even royal men. (At least one scholar who examined the hoard was moved to tears by the beauty of the workmanship. ) Since many of the objects seem to have been torn off weapons, it has been suggested that these were trophies of war, roughly stripped from the corpses of fallen noblemen after a battle. The jury is still out on why, when, and by whom the objects were buried, and study of the hoard is likely to go on for years. Whatever conclusions are reached, it is certain that these, in turn, will eventually have to be revised as new generations of scholars ask new questions and reimagine the early medieval past.