The Staffordshire Hoard (2016)

Discovery, innovation and science in the historic environment Championing Historic Places Issue 02 | Winter 2015-16 The Stafordshire Hoard Uncovering the secrets of this famous discovery of Anglo-Saxon treasure. The hoard at the end of the grouping exercise in February 2014. © Birmingham Museums Trust The Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver objects, found in 2009, has been the subject of an Historic England funded research project since 2012. The work to analyse the c 4,000 fragments is now halfway complete; this article summarises what we have discovered so far. inlaid with niello, providing a black pattern against the shine of the silver; there were many silver sheets with die-impressed decoration, again frequently gilded. All had been very harshly treated in antiquity. There is evidence of systematic and very rough stripping of the fittings from the objects they decorated, with consequent tearing and bending. The recovery of the hoard at Hammerwich, Staffordshire in 2009 (Dean et al 2010) is well known because of the worldwide media attention it received. It is unique within Britain, where hoards of this date have never been found before. It is a challenge to make sense of the enormous assemblage of objects, ranging from complete items to tiny fragments, that made up the hoard. Though many are sword hilt fittings, it is clear there are a number of items for which there are currently no parallels and whose function is unclear. In addition at least one helmet is represented by no less than c 1,500 separate fragments. When complete the items would have been spectacular. The gold objects were covered with filigree and garnet cloisonné decoration. The silver ones were often The sort of damage inflicted on the fittings when being stripped from sword hilts in antiquity (K117). Guy Evans, © Barbican Research Associates Ltd Issue 2: Winter 2015-16 | Historic England Research | 3 The Stafordshire Hoard The research team was faced with the equivalent of multiple jigsaw puzzles whose pieces had been jumbled together and whose boxes had been lost. Our aim has been to design a project which would deliver a catalogue of the material, including a discussion of what it represented, in a timely manner. We want the resulting publication to act as the foundation on which future studies can be based, given the considerable research potential of the hoard. Many of the objects that are commonplace within it would, if found as a single item elsewhere, be regarded as an important discovery, worthy of detailed study in its own right. that the goldsmith wanted to make use of the colour contrasts that would result from the combination of enriched and non-enriched golds. The British Museum allowed a range of items from its Anglo-Saxon collection to be analysed, so the pattern could be examined across a wide range of types of object from a variety of sources. No association of the technique with particular One of the emerging stories resulting from the research is a much-improved understanding of the working practices of the 7th-century goldsmith. Gold contains silver and copper naturally, and can be deliberately alloyed in the workshop. Gold fineness is the measure that describes how much actual gold is in the resulting piece of metal. Gold fineness during the Anglo-Saxon period is a matter of considerable scholarly interest, and one aim of our work was to provide a body of data detailing the composition of the gold. Normally this material is only analysed by non-destructive study of its surface, but a small pilot study analysed items at the surface (by X-ray fluorescence) and sub-surface (by scanning electron microscopy with dispersive X-ray analysis: SEM-EDX); the latter process requires a microscopic scrape of the surface to be made so as to reveal its core composition. We wanted to know if surface enrichment was a result of the conditions in which the object had been buried (in some soils the silver can be depleted through natural processes, leaving the surface with an artificially enriched gold content). Instead we discovered there was regular and deliberate surface enrichment of the gold, the silver and copper having been depleted while the objects were being made (Blakelock, in press). The aim, presumably, was to make the objects look as golden in colour as possible. The pilot became a larger study, covering 114 items with between them a total of 222 components. This revealed that enrichment was being used differently between components of the same item. For example, the fronts of sheets that had filigree or incised decoration were often enriched ‘while the filigree was not, making the sheet appear a more golden colour. It is thus clear 4 | Historic England Research | Issue 2: Winter 2015-16 Zoomorphic mount K1497. Gold content: surface front of sheet c 85 per cent, wires and core of sheet 77-78 per cent. Guy Evans, © Barbican Research Associates Ltd The Stafordshire Hoard Part of the ‘beaked’ quadruped frieze. Giovanna Fregni and Kayleigh Fuller, © Birmingham Museums Trust areas, workshops or sub-periods was found, so this use of enrichment, hitherto unsuspected, appears to be widespread. Currently the phenomenon is being explored by metallographic techniques, studying polished cross-sections so as to understand the physical structure of the gold. Preliminary results have shown the depleted layer where some of the copper and silver has been removed is approximately 7μm thick with most of the depletion in the upper 5μm. Work to try to establish what techniques were used to achieve this unexpected and sophisticated craft practice is ongoing. Silver sheets from the helmet(s) found in the hoard presented special problems because of their very fragmentary nature. Progress has been made in re-joining these tiny pieces, a process which allows the original working practices to be established. A frieze of ‘beaked’ quadrupeds possibly from the helmet, for example, was made using a die depicting the five creatures. The die had a beaded border, and the pellets at the end of this border were made slightly larger than the others so as to act as a key when the craftsman was lining up the design with the metal that was to be embossed. The metalsmith could have slid the strip of metal from left to right while working, using the beads to help line up the last creature that had been embossed quite closely to the first creature on the die, before embossing the next set. Using this insight and the slight differences that can be seen on each of the five animals, the fragments can be lain out in the order they must have occupied in the original frieze, even when no joining fragments have been found. By doing this we now know this frieze was at least 55cm long. A range of organic materials have been discovered in the construction and decoration of the items in the hoard. Beeswax, a protein-based glue, horn, bone, amber and wood have been identified using a combination of optical microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, SEM-EDX, and X-ray micro-computed tomography. The glue is almost always found in association with beeswax inside the cloisonné cells, and there is some evidence that it may be derived from a fibrous protein such as hoof or horn. Also of special interest is the lime mortar used as a filler inside several pommel caps. This gold and garnet pommel (K1195) used lime mortar in its core. Guy Evans, © Barbican Research Associates Ltd Whilst there is more organic material in the hoard than initially anticipated, it is not suitable to form the basis of a radiocarbon dating programme. The material is either contaminated, or available in too small a quantity to provide samples. The dating of the hoard thus continues to rely on conventional stylistic analysis (Fern and Speake 2014). As a whole it consists of material dating Issue 2: Winter 2015-16 | Historic England Research | 5 The Stafordshire Hoard The craftsmanship on these hilt fittings is comparable to that on the regalia in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial (Items K354, 370, 449). Guy Evans, © Barbican Research Associates Ltd from the mid/late 6th to the mid/late 7th century, with the bulk in the second half of the date range. Now we are in a position to join pieces together and to identify sets of objects, the research is entering a new phase. New forms are emerging, especially within the cast silver pommels, which were found broken into numerous small fragments. These often have gilded relief decoration, further enhanced by gold filigree, niello inlay and garnet and glass cloisonné. Some, most unusually, have sword rings on both shoulders. They combine multiple different styles of ornament in much the same way as the earliest 7th-century manuscripts do, suggesting the merging of Anglo-Saxon art with British or Irish influences (Fern forthcoming). The final publication is expected in 2018 and will incorporate a large digital component, to be made available through the Archaeology Data Service, as well as a book. In the interim we publish regular Cast silver gilded pommel reconstructed from six fragments with a montage showing the combination of different art styles on the front and back. Lucy Martin, (Cotswold Archaeology) © Barbican Research Associates Ltd 6 | Historic England Research | Issue 2: Winter 2015-16 The Stafordshire Hoard newsletters and updates on the Barbican website https://www.barbicanra.co.uk/staffordshire-hoard. html, and the conservation team – who run a very successful outreach programme – also have a blog https://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/blog/research. The public, who responded so magnificently when helping raise the £3,285,000 needed to buy the hoard, remain fascinated by this extraordinary discovery. Since October 2014 over 200,000 people have visited the galleries in Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham where it is displayed. The hoard has also inspired a variety of artistic responses; the recent festival of hoard-inspired plays at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme https://www.newvichoardfestival.org.uk/ is one example. As the secrets of the hoard are uncovered this interest should be further fuelled. Further Reading Barbican Research Associates, more information at: https://www.barbicanra.co.uk/ Blackelock, E in press ‘Never Judge a Gold Object by its Surface Analysis: a Study of Surface Phenomena in a Selection of Gold Objects from the Staffordshire Hoard’. Archaeometry Dean, S Hooke, D and Jones, A 2010 ‘The “Staffordshire Hoard”: the Fieldwork’. Antiquaries Journal 90, 139–52 Fern, C forthcoming ‘Treasure at the Frontier: Artefacts from the Staffordshire Hoard in Context’, in Semple, S and Orsini, C (eds) Life on the Edge: Social, Political and Religious Frontiers in Early Medieval Europe. Proceedings of the 63rd Sachsensymposion, Durham (Hannover) ■ The Staffordshire Hoard is owned by Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent city councils and cared for on their behalf by Birmingham Museums Trust and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The Staffordshire Hoard research project is conducted by Barbican Research Associates and funded by Historic England and the owners. The team who are working on the project can be found on the Barbican website https://www.barbicanra.co.uk/team.html Fern, C and Speake, G 2014 Beasts, Birds and Gods: Interpreting the Staffordshire Hoard. Alcester: West Midlands History The Staffordshire Hoard, more information at: https:// www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/ Author Hilary Cool PhD FSA Primarily specialises in small finds and vessel glass of the Roman era though her research has ranged over many different periods and materials. Barbican Research Associates, the company she founded with four colleagues in 2000, specialises in post-excavation work, bringing difficult projects to publication and integrating artefact studies into the wider archaeological context. She and Barbican have been managing the hoard project since 2011. It has been an interesting, if challenging, experience from which she currently recovers by writing specialist reports, going to the pub (the timing and frequency depending on the challenges), and holidaying in Italy (whenever possible). Issue 2: Winter 2015-16 | Historic England Research | 7