www.historywm.com36

BEOWULF’SMIRROR

Rich in gold and garnets, the contents of the hoard represent a warrior’s kit, covering a period fromthe sixth to the seventh centuries AD. Object conservation and research are enabling questionsabout the Anglo-Saxons and kingdom of Mercia to be answered, but how and why the hoard was

hidden in the Staffordshire soil is likely to remain a mystery.

Deb Klemperer, Jenni Butterworth, Pieta Greaves

The military and religious fittings of the StaffordshireHoard were buried together, but they were notoriginally crafted as one collection. Some of theobjects were heavily worn and of considerable agewhen they were buried, whilst others were newly

made. The raw materials and manufactured objects have a broadgeographical origin, but presented in context, they are illuminatingthe material culture and early history of England itself.

REFLECTIONS ON THE STAFFORDSHIRE HOARD

The Mercian Kingdom: a World of Political and Physical PowerThe Mercian kingdom is a shadowy beast: historical, archaeologicaland modern administrative quirks have combined to render it less‘visible’ to us than its neighbours. We know that by 655 AD, whenKing Penda was slain at the battle of Winwaed (modern locationunknown), Mercia was already an aggressive and expansionist militarypower that would come to dominate England in the centuries ahead.

© B

irm

ingh

am M

useu

ms

Trus

t

The art of war. Decorated in the niello style, this sword pommel is representative ofthe warrior kit that makes up the bulk of identifiable hoard objects.

www.historywm.com 37

But the evidence for the formative period of thisimportant Anglo-Saxon kingdom is sparse, and that iswhy the hoard is such an important and uniquecollection. It provides an unexpected wealth of evidencefor the warrior élite that enabled leaders like Penda tosucceed. In the hoard, we have acquired a detailedresource of object types, images and craft techniqueswhich speak vividly of a rich and complicated world ofpersonal and physical power.

The hoard does not tell us much about the ordinarypeople of seventh-century Mercia; for that we rely on thecollections at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery(PMAG). However, it does tell us a great deal about thesmiths and craftsmen who created these beautiful objects,and the men - and they probably were all men - whoowned them.

The decoration gives remarkable insights into a periodwhere Christian and pagan belief systems were collidingor coexisting. The likely geographical spread for the rawmaterials and manufactured objects provides newevidence for the wider contacts of the Mercian kingdom,whether acquired through trade or warfare. All of thesefacets provide vital information about the people andculture that generated these distinctive objects. Onlydetailed research and conservation can unpick thesenarratives.

Object Lessons

The Staffordshire Hoard was found in thesouth of the county, in the parish ofHammerwich, an area which was part ofthe Mercian heartland in the seventhcentury. However, it seems likely that at

least some of the hoard was made elsewhere in England.One or two of the artefacts may be from North Germanyor Scandinavia. But all of the objects represent the élitestrata of early medieval society and perhaps some of themwould even have been worn by members of aroyal household.

The rarity and status of these objectswould ensure that even in an illiteratesociety the wearer could be easilyidentified as a person of importanceor power. Any one of these objectswould have been a major discoveryin itself, but to find a whole cache ofthis material is unprecedented in termsof both size and the range of materialspresent.

The bulk of the identifiable hoardobjects consists of sword fittings, with over85 sword pommels identified so far, many ina fragmentary and twisted state due to theirremoval from the parent object before burial. There are

BEOWULF’S MIRROR

The Book of Durrow typifies the earliest manuscript animal art, a decorativeform found on many objects from the hoard.

One of the most significant finds from the hoard, this silver gilt strip bears a Biblical inscription in Latin.

© B

irm

ingh

am M

useu

ms

Trus

t

Ms

57, f

.192

v: C

arpe

t Pag

e, fr

om th

e B

ook

of D

urro

w, c

.650

-700

(vel

lum

), Ir

ish

Scho

ol, (

7th

cent

ury)

/ ©

The

Boa

rd o

f Tri

nity

Col

lege

, Dub

lin, I

rela

nd /

The

Bri

dgem

an A

rt L

ibra

ry

www.historywm.com38

also fittings from seaxes (knives), a small number of sword pyramids,other decorative fittings and mounts, and at least one helmet, in1500 fragments. A large quantity of silver gilt foils, which may havedecorated the helmet, present a highly important group, theirstylised images showing both men and beasts adding to a body ofknowledge of such objects.

The decorative types in the hoard mostly fall into several majortypes: gold filigree work, garnet cloisonné (stones separated bynarrow strips of metal), niello (a black silver or copper sulphidecompound) and the silver gilt foils. Chris Fern, the hoard’s Anglo-Saxon expert, has noted:

many objects are decorated in Salin’s Style II, stylisticallyintermediate between the regalia of Sutton Hoo (c. 625 AD) andthe earliest manuscript animal art, typified by The Book ofDurrow (c. 650-675 AD). Within this, there is an extraordinaryrange of distinctive and individual decorative motifs. There arecreatures recognisable as boars, fish and eagles, serpents andpossibly wolves and horses, though most are generic ‘zoomorphs’(animal representations) and some may be deliberately fantastical- perhaps the wyrms or dragons of Anglo-Saxon legend.

Christian MotifsThe few Christian pieces within the hoard shed light on atransitional period when pagan traditions were coming to an endand Christian practice was being adopted. The ability of the hoardto re-write what we know about this time is illustrated by aninscribed strip of gold, which if found in isolation would perhaps

have been dated to the eighth century AD, whereas its contextwithin the hoard suggests an earlier date.

The largest single object is also a Christian one, the great goldcross, which has been folded into itself, presumably for ease oftransport. The gold arms feature animal designs of the highestquality, once embellished with four large garnets on each end and alarge central stone, possibly garnet. Only two of the garnets stillremain and more work is needed to establish what this cross wasused for. Two possible suggestions for its use have been aprocessional cross or a decorative cover for a gospel or bible.

Spoils of War?In fact although many of the objects display decorative techniquesof the highest quality, comparable to Sutton Hoo, many have nodirect parallels either in the UK or Europe and their precise use orfunction is unclear; this includes some of the large garnet stripswith filigree panels which are currently of unknown purpose.

There are no iron and few copper alloy items within the hoard.The precious metal hilt fittings had been stripped from the swordsand knives, and no blades remain. Many of the other metal itemsthat might be expected to form part of a warrior’s suite of kit aremissing. There are no horse fittings and only three tiny buckles -nothing to parallel the great buckle from Sutton Hoo, and nowherenear the number of strap ends and buckle fastenings that 85 swordsmight suggest. There are no female dress fittings and accessories.

Anglo-Saxon society would have valued the weapons themselvesat least as much as the precious metal they contained, as evidenced

The folded cross, the largest single object in the hoard, its arms decorated with interlaced animal forms.

© B

irm

ingh

am M

useu

ms

Trus

t

by the poem Beowulf. The will of PrinceÆthelstan in 1014 bequeaths to his brother,Edmund Ironside, what he described as Offa’ssword, which would have been well over acentury old by that date. The hoard itselfcontains some pommel caps that could havecome from heirloom swords like these.

This raises many questions of how and whythe hoard came to be in a Hammerwich field.Was it the spoils of war, a royal treasure chestor a payment for services rendered? Furtherwork by the research team will attempt toanswer these questions. The landscape wherethe hoard was deposited offers importantcontext. It was buried in an area which wasprobably heath or woodland a short distancefrom Watling Street, the nearby Roman road; itwas thus hidden in an unpopulated area, butnear a major arterial route.

Conservation and Research

The Staffordshire Hoard isundergoing one of the largestartefact research programmesin England, a programmewhich will continue for

another three years. Since its initial excavation,the hoard has benefited from grant aid ofnearly £400,000 from English Heritage. Theteam has been conserving and conductingscientific analysis on the finds at BirminghamMuseum and Art Gallery and at the BritishMuseum. The research programme also drawson many Anglo-Saxon experts from across theUK and Europe to place the hoard objects inthe broadest possible social and politicalcontext.

The Anglo-Saxon specialist Chris Fern hasbeen leading typological and stylistic analysison the assemblage for the last 18 months,during which he has examined each item inthe collection individually. This first stage ofthe research programme drew to a close inFebruary, culminating in a final two-week‘grouping exercise’ which brought the cleanedhoard together for the first time in 1500 years.The grouping event tested Chris’s theoriesabout which items fit together physically andstylistically. He said: ‘The great Anglo-Saxonpoem Beowulf, once believed to be artisticexaggeration, now has a true mirror inarchaeology.’

The number of artefacts in the collectionnow stands at an incredible 4,000, after around

500 objects and fragments previously hidden in the soil around other items have beenrevealed, including a garnet bird mount. Pairs and groups of sword fittings have beenmatched to show what original sword hilts looked like, and mystery cloisonné fittingshave been matched up into suites that decorated the same original objects.

The research, conservation and scientific analysis has revealed much newinformation about how the objects were constructed including: the composition of thealloys used to create the objects; the fact that other materials are present alongside thegold and silver, with woods such as hornbeam and ash; animal horn; and glues andresins made of animal and plant extracts.

Making Sense of an Elusive Kingdom: Objects from otherMercian SitesThe research and conservation so far have revealed clearly the highly sophisticated andtechnical ability of the craftsmen who created the hoard, and the wealth and status oftheir patrons. This is an exceptional assemblage, and very few high-status finds of asimilar date have been recovered from the region to place it within the context ofMercian life.

In the immediate vicinity of the hoard itself, about 100 metres away from the find, a simply-decorated gilded copper alloy circular object was found, with an integralcentral pin and a blue glass bead at its centre, which may be a fitting from a horseharness. In the nearby village, the tiny Hammerwich gold and garnet necklace pendantwas recovered about a kilometre from the hoard. Of seventh-century date, thisrepresents the kind of high-status female dress accessory that is entirely absent from thehoard itself.

The life of ordinary people in seventh-century Mercia is indeed challenging todeduce from their material culture. According to Della Hooke: ‘the early medievalperiod is probably one of the periods least visible archaeologically’. There are howevera small number of important sites about ten miles north of the hoard findspot.Catholme, situated on river gravels close to Burton-on-Trent, is a good example ofnormal assemblages we find from Anglo-Saxon sites; it is dominated by iron andcopper alloy objects, pottery, glass, bone and stone objects.

Extensive excavations revealed a checkerboard of up to 65 building ‘footprints’within a framework of trackways to control livestock, dating from the early 600s to the late 800s. The buildings represented were timber-framed, with wattle and daubwalls, thatched roofs, and sometimes sunken floors. They were halls, homes, cattle shedsand workshops.

BEOWULF’S MIRROR

Gold and garnet strips display decorative techniques of the highest quality. © B

irm

ingh

am M

useu

ms

Trus

t

www.historywm.com 39

Deb Klemperer is Principal Collections Officer, The Potteries Museum &Art Gallery; Jenni Butterworth is Programme Co-ordinator for theStaffordshire Hoard and Pieta Greaves is Staffordshire Hoard ConservationCo-ordinator, Birmingham Museums Trust.

Further Reading

For the latest news on the Staffordshire Hoard visitwww.staffordshirehoard.org.ukMartin Carver, Alex Sanmark & Sarah Semple, Signals of Belief in EarlyEngland: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited (Oxbow, 2010).Della Hooke, ‘The post-Roman and the early medieval periods in the WestMidlands: a potential archaeological agenda' in Sarah Watt (ed.), TheArchaeology of the West Midlands: A Framework for Research (Oxbow,2010).Stuart Losco-Bradley & Gavin Kinsley, Catholme: An Anglo-SaxonSettlement on the Trent Gravels in Staffordshire (English Heritage, 2002).For a series of films about the Staffordshire Hoard go to History WestMidlands at www.historywm.com.

The artefacts recovered emphasised food preparation andclothing production. They included doughnut-shapedfired and unfired clay loomweights, used to weight thewarp threads on a vertical loom, and fired clay orstone spindle whorls, used to weight the dropspindle when spinning or plying wool. The smallquantities of handmade pottery are from coarsevessels with baggy shapes, and rough surfaces.

A quernstone on which grain was ground, charcoalattesting to the use of around fifteen native tree species, slagevidencing metalworking, and fewer than ten small copper alloyand lead items only add to the picture of a paucity of artefactsrepresenting the lives of hundreds of villagers over two-hundredyears. So much has not remained from that which the villagers threwaway - the artefacts which either decayed or were reused – leather,animal hides and skins, horn, wool, wood, and larger metal objects.

By contrast the nearby Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Wychnor andStapenhill contain burials holding cherished possessions: well-madeiron spearheads – the wooden shaft decayed away – knife blades,domed iron bosses from the centre of shields (the wooden shieldalso decayed), copper alloy brooches, glass beads and burnished potswhich perhaps held food or drink.

These were artefacts which held meaning, carefully placed withthe dead person to accompany them on their journey. As well asburials, there were cremated remains placed in pots. The differencesin pagan mortuary practice may reflect a worship of different godswithin different family groups, or hierarchies within the villagecommunity.

These Catholme villagers lived and died in a world that appearsvery different in many respects from that of the Staffordshire Hoard, yet both provide insights into the Mercian kingdom of the seventhcentury AD. Did the residents of Catholme ever see the gold andgarnet warrior adornments of the Staffordshire Hoard in use? Wesimply do not know, but by studying the detailed evidence we arelocating the hoard in the context of the wider archaeologicalevidence for Mercia, and we can build up a clearer picture of thiselusive kingdom.

The Importance of the Hoard

The conservation and research that has already takenplace has delivered astonishing results. But there isstill much more to do: more stories, informationand understanding that can be extracted from thecollection. To take one example, the continued

piecing together of the thousands of fragments of silver foil has thepotential to reveal not just the specific objects they came from, butalso to provide a new body of information that informs us aboutwider aspects of Anglo-Saxon life, such as dress, weaponry, animals,beliefs, mythology, craft techniques, international influences, politicsand even humour.

The hoard will never be ‘solved’, but that is a positive thing, not adisadvantage. It is such a rich resource that new research will alwaysbe able to draw out new stories about the mysterious but powerfulMercian kingdom. l

www.historywm.com40

BEOWULF’S MIRROR

Above: This great gold belt-buckle from Sutton Hoohighlights items of warrior kitnot found amongst theStaffordshire Hoard.

Right: High-status gold andgarnet pendant found atHammerwich. A female dressaccessory entirely absent fromthe hoard.

Below: Clay loomweights foundat Catholme provide insightinto the life of ordinary peoplein seventh-century Mercia.

© T

he T

rust

ees

of th

e B

ritis

h M

useu

m©

The

Pot

teri

es M

useu

m &

Art

Gal

lery

© T

he P

otte

ries

Mus

eum

& A

rt G

alle

ry