The announcement that a major hoard of Anglo-Saxon metalwork was discovered in July this year in the county of Staffordshire has generated great excitement. The hoard consists of around 1500 items including 5kg of gold. It was initially said to be 7th century, though a report on the inscribed pieces suggests an 8th-9th century date. The significance of this find is likely to be immense – already, misleading statements about the hoard being ‘bigger than Sutton Hoo‘ are circulating.
But questions are already being raised over the circumstances of the hoard’s discovery. Once reported to authorities, the hoard had been excavated for five days and the finds were in boxes, despite this amount of precious metal automatically qualifying as being compulsory to report under the Treasure Act.
Efforts are now being made to salvage some contextual information for the find, which might illuminate the circumstances of the deposit, who the treasures belonged to, the story behind the artefacts. With treasure hunting using metal detecting encouraged by the British state, this scramble for information is a bizarre but sadly familiar situation.
As with around 80 per cent of finds reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the ‘Staffordshire hoard’ was made using a metal detector on farmland, by Terry Herbert, a long time detectorist. With reports of major discoveries now commonplace in the British media, public awareness of metal detecting has been raised. It is important, though, that such discoveries are not blindly celebrated. They should be critically assessed. If it transpires that metal detecting and private entitlement to finds is not the public interest – financially, intellectually, ethically – then current laws, codes and attitudes need to be reviewed.
Tags: Anglo-Saxon gold, Burntwood hoard, metal detecting, Portable Antiquities Scheme, treasure hunting
September 26, 2009 at 3:42 am
“Efforts are now being made to salvage some contextual information for the find”
As I see it, the finds had already been ploughed out of context, and if they had not been recovered by the detectorist, would have consisted of six boxes of “Hack Gold”.
He reported the finds within five days, wishing to remove as much as possible to avoid it “going missing”. To comply with the treasure act, he had fourteen days to report the find, so he was well within the time limit.
I detect a Paul Barford influence in the above post ?
September 26, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Contextual archaeology has not been of great help in the proliferation of understandings of context. At its core, it sticks to context as a closed find. “Ploughed out” does not equal “out of context”, since all things are relative. Recovering without an appreciation of spatial relationships destroys more contextual information than any series of ploughing events. Proliferating an analogy with forensics (“forensic archaeology” in a broader sense), which has a public appeal far greater than contextual archaeology will ever achieve, would be more helpful in engendering a sense of context that is more up-to-date with current archaeological practice in its appreciation of details that does not equal closed find=context.
September 26, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Hi APR,
Even if they were from a ploughed field such a lot of finds apparently dug in a few days suggests the location was fairly intact. There’s a couple of photos of the findspot put up by the PAS on Flickr – the context doesn’t look that good from these … do you know over what area the finds were spread?
Thanks for telling me about the 14 day rule. My issue is not with the finder. I appreciate he did not break the law and that he is a so-called responsible metal detectorist. He even said he was concerned about ‘nighthawkers’. It may be that his actions have meant the group has stayed together. My point is that treasure hunting is not all that responsible, even if occasionally it stumbles on such an important thing as this.
W.
September 26, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Hi Erik, the ‘ploughed out’ argument is often used as a justification for metal detecting as so much metal detecting is done on cultivated land. I think your call for a broader definition of context is important. Archaeologists are probably partly to blame for the idea that contexts have to be closed. I suppose also that, dealing with a hoard (and such a spectacular one), there’s a temptation to focus exclusively on the artefacts and less on the landscape/context. You can already tell a story from the antiquities alone…
September 28, 2009 at 4:09 am
You probably suspected that I also have a problem with the closed-find connotation of the concept of “hoard”. One hoard can contain many.
September 29, 2009 at 7:32 am
I get the distinct feeling that there are those who would rather these gold artefacts hadn’t been found. Or should I say, would rather they hadn’t been found by a detectorist.
The PAS has worked hard over the last thirteen years, to try and break down the barriers between archaeologists and detectorists. Something that was covered in the recent PAS conference at the British Museum, which I attended. Where metal detecting was discussed by academics from across Europe.
I agree that detectorists don’t get it right every time, but most make the effort to recover items in a responsible fashion.
Although once an artefact has been found, unless 24hr security can be arranged, it can’t be left in situ.
The PAS has recorded over 140,000 items, most found by detectorists, which otherwise would probably still be in the ground.
I think they must be doing something right.
We are all on the same side.
September 29, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Please don’t get me wrong, I think it is a fantastic discovery and it doesn’t matter who found it.
I agree that co-operation and consensus is a good thing, but we are not all on the same side.
As you say, there is a generally accepted standard of good (responsible) practice by metal detector users. The question should be whether this practice is good in the first place. There might indeed be lots of nice ‘items’, but almost all of these are made of metal and only represent a fraction of archaeological evidence. The wilful focus on saleable antiquities means other forms of artefact and context are ignored.
September 30, 2009 at 2:56 am
In this respect, there are also ‘good’ and ‘bad’ archaeologists.
December 19, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world; detectorists will always be around so there must be an incentive for them to come forward with these finds as there is at present; to apply over regulation would mean a black market resulting in a total loss of context about such finds.