Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 1:03 pm Post subject: What a treasure.
The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found has officially been declared to be treasure.
The ruling by South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh means the haul of at least 1,345 items will now be valued by a committee of experts before being offered for sale.
Ruling the cache of gold and silver items - much of it taken from weaponry - to be treasure, Mr Haigh said: "This is a magnificent find, both in terms of its content and its likely history."
Roger Bland, head of portable antiquities and treasure at the British Museum, told the inquest in Cannock that the significance of the find was "only beginning to dawn" on the small number of experts who have examined it.
A total of 1,345 items have been examined by experts, although the list includes 56 clods of earth which have been X-rayed and are known to contain further metal artefacts, meaning the total number of items is likely to rise to around 1,500.
Mr Bland told the coroner: "It is at least as significant as any of the major discoveries of this period that have been made in the past."
Conceding that it may be difficult to establish the story which lies behind the astonishing find, Mr Bland added: "It is a fantastically important discovery.
"It is assumed that the items were buried by their owners at a time of danger with the intention of later coming back and recovering them."
The inquest heard that the haul was found by metal detectorist Terry Herbert just below the surface of a cultivated field in south Staffordshire in July.
Mr Bland said the hoard - thought to date back to between 675 and 725AD - was unearthed in what was once the Kingdom of Mercia. "I think wealth of this kind must have belonged to a king but we cannot say that for absolute certain," the expert told Mr Haigh.
As far as I can make out all the stuff will be privately sold. The owners may choose to display them in museums, what would be the point of buying this stuff and then just keeping it sitting in a safe?
Sod the decendants! Nobody ever gave us anything. They can fend for themselves.
LOL!
That is the most crass statement I have ever heard you come out with.
Did you wipe your own arse as a baby and progress to doing and knowing everything from there all on your own.
Of course you didn't.
We are all products of the past and enjoy both the good and the bad things passed down from previous generationsI have always held that we in the west ignore the lessons our ancestors to much, and of course we also ignore the needs of future generations.
Perhaps if we worked not for ourselves but for the future of those to come we would feel more fullfiled and less unhappy. _________________ Please visit our main site
Last edited by david hobbs on Fri Sep 25, 2009 11:47 am; edited 1 time in total
for heavens sake buy it off the people and keep it in a museum
what is incredible is how many times that field must have been dug up and planted .. without any discovery _________________ as a babe drinks from its mothers breast so too does man milk mother earth
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