Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure, and the Mystery of the Saxons

Cover

Title Page

INTRODUCTION

PRELUDE

CHAPTER ONE

THE COMING OF THE SAXONS

CHAPTER TWO

KILLING WEAPONS

CHAPTER THREE

THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL

CHAPTER FOUR

THE LANGUAGE OF MIDDLE EARTH

CHAPTER FIVE

GOLD IN THE GROUND

CHAPTER SIX

THE LAST BATTLE

APPENDIX OF ARTIFACTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

SOURCES AND SUGGESTED READING

Terry Herbert parked his car on a side road and, carrying his metal detector, opened the gate and went into the field. This was his second visit. He had spent four hours here a week earlier but had found nothing, just modern junk. Climbing a low ridge running across the field, he walked to an area that he hadn’t searched before and turned on his metal detector. Swinging the detector, he walked up and down for 15 minutes before the machine gave a bleep; there was something there. He dug in to the soft, floury soil and picked up his find. It looked like a piece of brass, thin and twisted, with a pin sticking out of one side. As the metal glittered in the sunlight for the first time in 1,400 years, he realized that it was gold. Scarcely able to contain his excitement, Terry worked on; he found another piece, then another; slowly he moved toward the center of the hoard, his metal detector now buzzing continuously. Sometimes he would dig after a signal and three or four objects would fall out on the soil. Even when he put the detector down, it lay there buzzing.

At about 3 p.m. Terry went down to see Fred Johnson, the farmer. Fred had been born on the farm and had lived there all of his life. Terry showed him the twisted gold sword fittings, pommels, and garnet-set strips, still covered in earth. Fred was skeptical, and only later did he come to realize the items’ importance. His countryman’s sound good sense has never left him; when I claimed that this was the best crop that had ever come off the field, he corrected me: The food the field had produced was more important—you can’t eat gold.

Terry worked until 5 p.m. before deciding that enough was enough. He had found 50 or 60 objects, 12 or 15 pommel caps, two gold and garnet pyramids, and a bar of metal bearing strange lettering and a gold cross, folded around the jewels that once had decorated it. While digging this, Terry had seen something sticking out of the ground: a golden snake.

On returning the following day, Terry found that it had been raining. He started searching and, within minutes, was again finding item after item, sometimes in holes that he had already dug. This was getting desperate. The most striking find of the second day was a gold mount decorated with two birds of prey holding a fish in their talons. He also picked up a second, smaller cross; one of its arms was missing, but it turned up about eight yards away. It rained on and off for the next two days, and Terry kept dodging the thunderstorms that swept over the hill. It was very dramatic; the elements seemed to be marking the hoard’s return to the world of man. Terry was acutely aware of a real threat: The site lay in the angle of two busy main roads, one being Watling Street, the old Roman road. Would anyone passing see him and wonder why he was spending days on this spot? Among metal detectors there was, unfortunately, a criminal element that would see this site as suitable for nefarious attentions. Terry hated leaving the site each evening and was relieved when he returned each day to find all was well.

By the fifth day the number of finds had fallen off, but there were still surprises. One of the most memorable objects—a silver-gilt helmet cheekpiece with processions of weird animals—was found on day five. In an area about six feet square Terry picked up 21 lumps of clay with metal fragments sticking out of them. He wisely decided to leave them alone and bagged them for further treatment. He was beginning to see a pattern in the finds: There was one main area with a second concentration two to three yards to the south. From these the plow had scattered the objects down the field for about 40 yards. Terry was now very tired and was not sleeping well. It was time to call in the archaeologists.

Duncan Slarke, Finds Liaison Officer for Staffordshire, was at his desk in Birmingham Museum when he received a phone call from John Hayden, Terry Herbert’s cousin. Duncan sat, amazed, as John related what had been found; it sounded incredible. That evening Duncan went to see Terry at home. On the table stood a plastic box, which was opened to reveal the stuff of dreams. Duncan’s first comment was Wow! He went through the contents of the box and said, Unbelievable, magical … one of these finds would have been important, but this lot: WOW! Terry then dropped the bombshell: There’s another four boxes, he said. Working late that night, Duncan made notes. Eventually he left with the boxes. Responsibility for the hoard had moved on.

Duncan contacted the organizations that needed to be involved, and there was a meeting of most of them during the following week at the museum in Birmingham. There were representatives from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and English Heritage—the body responsible for archaeology in England—and archaeologists from Staffordshire County Council. The Portable Antiquities Scheme was represented by me, Duncan, and Dr. Roger Bland, head of the department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum. We were awestruck by the beauty of what had been found, excited by its historical importance, yet scared stiff that it was our responsibility. Fortunately, fright can do wonderful things, and everyone rose to the occasion. It was clear that work had to be done on the find spot; Terry hadn’t found everything. Bill Klemperer from English Heritage said, Just get some archaeologists out there and sort it out. Then there was the legal side: There would need to be a coroner’s inquest on the hoard, but he would need a report on what was found.

Roger Bland, who is responsible for treasure, asked me if I could do a catalog, and so, over the next eight weeks, the hoard was cataloged. Security was still an issue, and a 24-hour guard was set up on the site. There was a complete news blackout; until the day of the inquest and press launch, no one outside the group knew of the discovery.

The excavation was carried out by a small team from Birmingham University led by Bob Burrows. They worked for four very wet weeks and, assisted by Terry Herbert, recovered and plotted the positions of everything they found. Terry felt his hoard moving away: The burden was lifting; they still needed me and my metal detector, but I was slowly losing my hoard. It’s hard to describe what I felt; I knew I could never keep it, but being taken away as more people became involved, I was losing it.

Fred Johnson often visited the site to see what was being found. Looking at the finds, he could understand how the archaeologists got as excited as they did; the workmanship is incredible. He was also impressed by the archaeologists themselves, struggling in the wet, and said they were incredible people.

We never found the thing that we most wanted: a context for the hoard, something to help date it or tell us why it had been buried. A pit or a pot from which it came, the remains of an associated building, anything that might provide a context. There was nothing; every bit of the hoard came from the plow soil. As they carried out geophysical surveys, scientists looked for electrical or magnetic anomalies that might reveal something beneath the ground, but there was nothing relating to the hoard.

Out of the rain, and helped by my wife, Dianne, I worked on the catalog of finds for the inquest. It was an unforgettable experience. Bag after bag was opened, and each object and fragment was weighed, measured, and recorded on a computer. We were the first people to be able to really look at the find; we saw strange, interlaced animals, their jaws locked around each other. As we worked we knew that we were in the presence of greatness. It was humbling.

KEVIN LEAHY

JULY 2011

NOTES ON THE TREASURE

SEARCHING FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS with a metal detector is legal in England as long as the landowner agrees and the site is not on the list of Ancient Monuments. When metal detectors became popular in the 1970s, many archaeologists were concerned that people were removing objects from sites and destroying important evidence. On the thin upland soils this concern was justified, but the situation was different in the heavily cultivated counties of eastern England (Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire). Here, the intensification of agriculture since World War II had led to a massive destruction of sites, and, by recording objects picked up by the detector operators, we could at least salvage something from the wreck. Criminals have used metal detectors to loot sites, and even excavations, but overall the instruments have led to an increase in our knowledge. Metal objects left in the plowed soil do not survive and, unless they are recovered, we will know nothing about them or the sites.

THE PORTABLE ANTIQUITIES SCHEME

The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a national project set up in 1997 to record archaeological finds made by metal-detector users and other members of the public. The program is based at the British Museum but has 40 local liaison officers covering the whole of England and Wales and six National Advisors (I am one of them) who ensure standards. This web-based program has now recorded more than 700,000 finds, all of which can be seen by visiting www.finds.org.uk. There is nothing like this organization anywhere else in the world, and it has led to massive expansion of our knowledge.

TREASURE TROVE AND TREASURE

Treasure is one of the peculiarities of the English legal system but, until it was reformed in 1996, it was even more peculiar. Basically, all finds of gold and silver, hoards of coins, and prehistoric metalwork belong to the Crown. To be treasure, a find must be more than 300 years old and contain more than 10 percent gold or silver. Single coins are not considered to be treasure, but any hoard of more than ten base-metal coins may be treasure. Hoards of prehistoric bronze may also be treasure.

The decision of whether or not a find is treasure is made by the district coroner, representing the Crown (the Queen and her government). If it is treasure, it will be offered to museums in the area or, in some cases, the British Museum. If the museums are not interested an object will be disclaimed and returned to the finder, but if they want to acquire it, the find will go before the Treasure Valuation Committee. The TVC takes advice from antiquity dealers who estimate how much a find would sell for at auction. Once a valuation is accepted by the finder, landowner, and interested museum, the museum has to raise the money to buy it from the Crown, which then makes an award of the full market value; this award is shared by the finder and the landowner. The payment of rewards has successfully motivated people to report