IT was the talk of the week in the print and broadcast media. The Staffordshire Hoard is being billed as the biggest collection found in England and the most important since the celebrated Sutton Hoo discovery of 1939.
The cache of over 1500 Anglo-Saxon gold and silver objects was
found in South Staffordshire by metal detectorist Terry Herbert in
July and was excavated from its site by archaeologists from
Staffordshire County Council and Birmingham.
The five kilograms of gold - with a melt value of around
£100,000 - have been called priceless but their monetary valuation
as art objects is important.
On September 24, the South Staffordshire Coroner formally
declared the hoard "treasure". As laid out in the Treasure Act of
1996, ownership has passed to the crown, but the finder and owner
of the land on which it was discovered are entitled to a reward of
the treasure's full commercial value.
Unlike the admirable speed with which the excavation has been
conducted, and placed in the public domain, coming up with that
figure could take much longer. A special committee will now consult
a panel of specialists that will include the antiquities trade and
auction houses.
Cataloguing the hoard is not expected to be particularly
difficult.
The obvious precedent for academic comparison is the Sutton Hoo
burial, discovered in the shadow of the Second World War more than
half a century before the Treasure Act, which contains much high
status metalwork of similar gold and garnet construction.
But, given that Anglo-Saxon gold objects do not come on the
market that often, there is far less to provide a commercial
precedent.
The valuation committee may well refer to the £20,000 sale of a
late 6th or early 7th century gilt pommel cap from a sword with a
complex interlaced pattern (at Bonhams in April 2006) or the
£125,000 paid by the British Museum for a set of Anglo-Saxon sword
hilt fittings that were found by a metal detectorist in Market
Rasen, Lincolnshire in 2002.
Adding further complications to the valuation are issues of
context and historical importance.
Most Anglo-Saxon finds have come from East Anglia or Kent, but
the Staffordshire Hoard was found further north in what was the
Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. As such it will likely change
perceptions and re-draw the map of Anglo-Saxon England.
Sutton Hoo is thought to be some kind of burial or cenotaph. The
Staffordshire hoard consists largely of martial objects: sword
fittings, shield bosses and strips from helmets and has more of the
feel of a hoard of booty or plunder.
As ATG's coins and medals correspondent Richard Falkiner, who
has served as a member of the valuations panel for Anglo-Saxon
finds in the past, points out: "It is also too early to assess
whether the burial of the hoard took place soon after the material
was made or at a much later date."
While it will probably take years to assess the full academic
significance of this find, three local institutions have expressed
an interest in finding a home for the hoard: The Birmingham City
Museum and Art Gallery, where the finds were unveiled (and will be
on display until October 13); the Potteries Museum in Stoke on
Trent; and Staffordshire County Council.
By Anne Crane
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