Staffordshire Hoard

In July 2009, one lucky find lifted I think finds like the

Staffordshire Hoard show that this was a vibrant and colourful and

bright society. The Staffordshire Hoard shone a dazzling light into

the shadowy world of the Dark Age Midlands. And it's transformed the

way we think we used to live. really must stop thinking that

these dreadful barbarians come along and it's not until 1,000

years later when the blessed remains of Greece and Rome are

rediscovered that the dove of civilization descends upon the

I'm about to take you on a journey into a mysterious past brought

miraculously to life. I'll unravel the secrets of the Staffordshire

Hoard and the incredible tales it has to tell us.

This is the story of one of the 1,600 years ago the Romans

abandoned Britain and a new, mysterious era in British history

The Dark Ages is the name traditionally given for the time

between the Romans leaving and William the Conqueror arriving.

It's a time of which we have only dim and distant knowledge, and you

can see why. Take this field at Catholme in Staffordshire. It

doesn't look much today, but it's actually the site of one of the

finest Dark Age finds ever seen in the Midlands. This was an Anglo-

Saxon settlement of the 7th century. A thriving community with more than

But these Dark Age Midlanders left precious little evidence that

The problem is that when the Romans left, they took their stone

building techniques with them. When the Anglo-Saxons built they used

wood, that's since rotted back into the earth. What they have left are

a few bits of fired ceramic. This is a weight from a weaving loom and

this is a delicate hand-made urn. Basically they didn't leave too

This has left historians with a major problem. How do you tell a

history of Dark Age Britain with just a few occasional, teasing

glimpses into life in these long forgotten kingdoms? It's taking

pieces of a puzzle. It's like having a thousand-piece puzzle and

you've only got eight of the pieces. That the sense with which we've

been working up until this point. England has yet to be invented, the

word barely exist. Instead you have these rival warring Anglo-Saxon

kingdoms that behave like the worst kind of takeover bid is in the City,

they decapitate a each other, literary. The idea that everybody

live in huts and Halls and really did not have much quality-of-life.

And that is why we get the term Dark Ages associated with it but it

is so far from the truth. We do, at least, know that Dark Age Britain

was an Anglo-Saxon country, populated by a mixture of locals

and Germanic tribes, who arrived to fill the gap when the Romans left.

Here in the Midlands there was a major kingdom called "Mercia". But

until the hoard arrived, we knew very little about who these

"Mercians" really were. We just had The artifacts we have covered the

whole day train from the 5th to the 11th century, that is a few items,

they do not give us a full idea of how things were at the time. You

could use documentary and you could use the fact that you have got

sacks and carved crosses and so on to put flesh on to it but the human

element is somewhat lacking. -- Saxon carved crosses. So, with just

a handful of finds scattered across the length of the country, and a

few surviving documents, historians had gone about as far as they could

in trying to piece together an entire era in the history of the

Midlands. Then, in July 2009, all of that

changed forever. It began with an unremarkable request from a man

with a metal detector, to explore a farmer's field in Staffordshire.

We'd had several requests in the past for people to come metal

detecting. Then Terry approached me and I'd told him no several times.

Anyway he come on and asked me if he could come on this field

specifically. And I thought it can't do any harm down there, he

won't find anything. Fred couldn't have been more wrong. Metal

detectorist Terry not only struck gold, he made the find of a

I was working in the yard and he came up mid-morning and he said,

"Sit down, what's the matter with you? Sit down," he said. I said,

"What's the matter?" "I found a Saxon hoard". Well, I didn't

believe him. I still didn't believe When the experts arrived, the true

extent of the hoard started to become clear. This was a find

unlike anything they'd seen before. We got to the site and within

seconds there was this large, oval gold piece just sat there on the

surface and I thought gosh, it's real, isn't it? It was just coming

out piece after piece and we were trying to record it as it was

coming out of the ground. I think we soon realised that there was

still a lot there that we needed to find. It's very different from the

normal sort of archaeology that we do, the sort of humdrum looking for

pits and for features just trying to tell the story of the past. You

never really get involved with finds involving precious metals.

This is real Indiana Jones type stuff. Suddenly we had over 1,500

new clues into our Dark Age past. Pommels from the tops of swords,

pieces of warrior helmet, strange serpents and mangled crosses. This

was a Boy's Own collection of warrior bling found in the heart of

the Midlands. And it captured the imagination of the world. You think

that metal detector is no use any more?... The biggest haul of Anglo-

Saxon gold ever found. I never thought I would hold this kind of

treasure in my career. It is something you dream of. The fact we

have made the item on the Six o'clock News meant that things were

going to be big. It is the Earth yielding up its treasure. It

literally came from the soil in Staffordshire, deliberately put

there, it was not moved from that until 15 hundred years later.

ARCHIVE: The biggest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered

has been found in a field in Staffordshire.

It wasn't just the press whose appetite was insatiable, the public

were hungry to find out more about the incredible hoard.

It is outstanding, the quality and quantity. I am very impressed. Her

absolutely fantastic. It has not disappointed one little bit. It is

quite a thrill to have a look at it. People were waiting for four hours

at its peak. To get 4,000 people through a gallery in one day is

unequalled here. It is astonishing. The hoard was huge, and packed with

beautifully crafted artifacts from one of the darkest parts of the

Dark Ages. But what did it actually tell us? Can one lucky find really

revolutionise our thinking of Anglo-Saxon England? And is it so

significant that our history of the Dark Age Midlands will now have to

be completely rewritten? To find out I'm going to travel across what

was once the Kingdom of Mercia to see if the hoard really lives up

the hype. I'm starting my journey here in

Tamworth. We know that in the mid- 7th century, right at the time of

the hoard, this area was a centre of power for the Dark Age kings of

Mercia. After roaming the lands trying to expand their kingdom or

fight off the threat of invasion, it was here they'd come back to, a

place where treaties were signed and tributes of gold and riches

paid out to the king's loyal warriors. And Tamworth Castle

stands on what was the heart of Even before the hoard was found,

historians thought they had a pretty good idea of the importance

of Tamworth, and the kind of people who lived here. The Royal Court was

a Borrie a band. -- a warrior band. The warrior elite surrounding the

king lived and died with him. He succeeds, they got pots of gold,

pots of land, lots of women, lots of nice horses and life was great.

If the king failed, they died horribly.

Well, actually if we come out onto the tower you get a fantastic sense

of the setting. And why it was such a special place. It is gorgeous.

Stunning, yes. you can see the castle is a very strategic point.

Marion Blockley is an archaeologist and an expert in Anglo-Saxon

history. For her, the hoard is further proof of the wealth and the

So this is a major British royal settlement? Absolutely. I have

worked in Canberra -- Canterbury, York, and many other places and it

tends to feel neglected but it was exceptionally significant. More

charters were signed here at important times will be like

Christmas and Easter, the Royal Court travelled around and Tamworth

was the place to be. The hoard was discovered just a few

miles from where we're standing, and for Marion it might just

provide proof of a very specific event in the 7th century Midlands.

Do you have any ideas how it might have got there? Nearby was a famous

battle. It is possible as the people who were involved run away,

they may have buried it. But they were killed. That is tantalising.

Walk what record do we have of it? There is a lament of it. Before

this they triumph. There was blood beneath the ravens and fierce

attack. Glory in battle, great plunder. Before the King, the other

King took it. And that is really rather wonderful. To think that

might be the history of the Staffordshire Hoard, that is quite

exciting. It may well be. This could be a rare, teasing moment of

clarity in a very murky history. The trouble is that this poem was

written around 200 years later than we can date anything in the hoard.

And battles like this weren't exactly rare. Turf wars were an

everyday feature of Anglo-Saxon life. We can understand it now I

think better than it's ever been possible since because we have

gangland culture back in Britain. It's gang warfare and what happens

is when you take over the territory of a rival gang, the lot get bumped

off, usually in extraordinarily So claiming the hoard is proof of

one particular battle might be pushing it. But put it together

with other Anglo-Saxon evidence from across Britain and its some of

the clearest evidence yet that, even in the 7th century, Mercia was

a wealthy, powerful and expanding Mercian kings at this moment were

the winners. So you see little kingdoms to the west, bigger

kingdoms to the east are sucked and absorbed. First of all you roll

Northumbria back, then you take over lands towards Wales and the

Welsh Marches, then of course the Mercians absorb Kent, they absorb

London, they swing over into East Anglia, so you're creating this

By the 8th or 9th century, Mercia is certainly the largest kingdom

geographically, it covers the largest portion of the British

But what about the warriors who carved out this vast kingdom? What

does the hoard tell us about them? And so those are pommels from the

sword are they? Yes, they are highly decorative, and that is a

different sort of pommel. There are more than 90 of these. I could not

believe it. I spent 30 years digging Anglo-Saxon side sticking

up a few of these objects and to seek them, my jaw dropped,

literally. This quantity is quite remarkable. Until now only a

handful of pommel caps have ever been found anywhere in Britain.

Finding 94 in one place suggests the Mercians were the unrivalled

But it's not just the number of pommel caps that's important, it's

the way they're decorated and what they're decorated with. What we may

have here is, these elements of decoration, are the personalisation

of a sword. The blade would be passed between warriors. These

Garnetts. They probably came from India and Sri Lanka. We can do

research on them. Large garnets came from India and Sri Lanka. They

then came from places like Bohemia and Portugal. You are looking at a

remarkable, international trade in this stuff. Globalisation?

Globalisation. These garnets are real evidence that, far from being

the insular island race, Anglo- Saxons were actually connected to

trade routes all over the world. And, it seems, when the warriors

got hold of these precious stones, they placed them on the items most

precious to them, their weapons. Their sword was their battle friend.

They gave names to their swords. We know about Excalibur. My favourite

sort, Excalibur. These swords were symbolic of the power of a great

warrior. Absolutely exquisite, a work of art on a weapon for killing

So the hoard is positive proof of the power of Mercia. It tells us

how rich they were, that they were involved in global trade and that

they liked a good fight. But can the hoard go one step further and

connect us to the most famous of Oh, I want it to be, we all want it

to be Penda, who is the famous king of Mercia, the warrior. Penda is

the king in the early 7th century of Mercia and he's fighting a huge

programme of expansion against Northumbria which had adopted

Christianity quite early and to begin with was immensely successful.

He defeats and unpleasantly disposes of two Northumbrian kings.

Presumably in ritual sacrifice. It would be lovely if this is the

The timing might well be right. Penda was a mighty overlord who led

Mercia's early expansion. Vicious even by the standards of the Dark

Ages, he killed two kings and banished another. But we know

little else about him, as the only surviving history was written by a

Northumbrian monk called Bede. hates Penda because he defeats and

does horrible things to Northumbrian kings. And also of

course he's the wrong side - he's a pagan. Bede is a great historian

that they are not usually impartial. He is writing for a purpose. Penda

really doesn't get the recognition that he deserves in the texts,

because most of the history at this point is written down by the

Venerable Bede. He's a Northumbrian and a Christian and therefore an

enemy of this pagan Mercian king, The hoard has yet to give us any

direct evidence of Penda. But that's not to say the two aren't

linked. Penda was the one king who held out, while everyone around him

was converting to Christianity. In 655, when he died fighting against

his enemies, Christianity consumed The conversion of this last kingdom

to Christianity would mark the beginning of a new era for England.

And what was discovered in the Staffordshire Hoard has helped

shine a light into exactly how and when this religious transformation

The conversion to Christianity changed the whole fabric of our

society, bringing with it the written word and the rule of law.

But, despite its importance to British history, no-one knows

exactly how or when it came about. Lichfield has been an important

religious centre since the early Christian days of Mercia. And this

book is the earliest documentary evidence of the religion in the

Midlands. This is the cathedral's greatest

treasure and we call it the St Chad Gospels. We think it was created to

a joke -- to adorn St Chad's shrine, he died in 672. This book is

associated with this building for around 1,300 years? Something like

that. The gospel and the hoard date from around the same time, a

crucial turning point in the religious history of Britain and in

the hoard are a mixture of pagan and Christian symbols. So were the

Mercians Christian converts or the last of the pagans? Or could the

crumpled crosses and Latin inscriptions be the looted

possessions of another defeated Christian enemy? My hunch is that

the Staffordshire Hoard gives us a last glimpse of pagan Mercia and

the book gives us a last that of -- a first glimpse of Christiane

immiscible. These are part of the same cultural family, the

interlacing and the zoo are more fake creatures in the depicted.

Lots of animals depicted in the hoard. Wonderful. We know it was

not uncommon for monks and bishops to be on the battlefield. Not

necessarily as combatants, more likely as non-combatants. But

bringing with them, as it were, the power in which their army believed.

Interesting, this is a quote on here which actually refers to

military activity. Yes, a Latin text from the Bible, from the Book

of Numbers. And the translation of the text is "a rise, O'Gaunt, and

that your animist be scattered, but those who hate you flee before you.

-- let your enemies be scattered.". Your pagan neighbour might want to

inscribe exactly that text on to a cross to lead the Christian

warriors into battle. It is a personal peace. You can imagine

somebody clutching it into battle. Yes, you can. And the fact it ends

up in a hole in the middle of mercy Bob, you wonder what else went

inside. You have got to feel that the owner was on the losing side

that day. Here the hoard throws up more questions than it answers.

This was a religious turning point, but whose? And rather than being

the last pagans in a largely Christian world, were the Mercians

actually a bit of both, subscribing to two religions at the same time,

just to make sure? I think we find in a number of Anglo-Saxon objects

this idea of hedging your bets, that we are talking about a

transitional moment. A spiritual transitional moment, but also a

cultural transitional moment, where they're moving from this Germanic

pagan past into this more sort of continentally influenced Christian

moment and the movement between the two is not going to be immediate.

So you have the protective talisman of the processional cross, that

idea of carrying Christ into battle, being protected by Him. And then

you have these talismans, these serpents, these traditional Anglo-

Saxon battle beasts. This is not peaceful, this is quite the

opposite. This is the church militant, the church warlike. Of

course, Christianity adapting itself to context. If you try and

implant Christianity in a warrior culture, it's got to assume the

elements of a warrior culture. So here you have war-like pagans

fighting war-like Christians. shouldn't underestimate just how

important the hoard is, when it comes to telling the story of

Britain's conversion to Christianity. But the revelations

For years we'd found basic pottery that made many of us assume that

our Dark Age ancestors lacked both skill and sophistication. But the

exquisite jewelry in the hoard At Birmingham Museum they are using

state of the art equipment to give us a window onto this never before

seen world. He see in more detail. We are seeing this in greater

detail than the person who owned it ever saw it. It is phenomenal. You

have got carefully cut Garnetts, laid into intricate cells, each

stone carefully shaped and stones that are tricky materials to work.

Garnett is not a particularly rare stone but it cannot be just sheered

off late. If you want it then, you have got to cut them thin. They

have got to be cut to these special shapes and they have got to be

perfect. There's the animal's head with two

little ring-like eyes. Harder they cut the shape to fit perfectly

within the gold? It is incredibly intricate. It is mind-blowing. The

more you look at it, the more incredibly complicated and

beautiful it is. What the hoard has laid bare here is a rich ruling

class. These weren't ignorant savages. They were people with

incredible wealth and skill who prized great beauty. The thing that

strikes you as you look at them is twofold apart from the engineering.

It's first of all the amazing linear sense, it's like Art Deco.

You also have a craftsmanship in terms of the matching of gold and

jewels, which I think you've got to get to Faberge before you've

They were the entertaining artwork of these people. They would spend a

lot of time in the company of their weaponry and so meditating and

ruminating on the imagery and how this worked and how one beast

begins and another ends, that's part of the beauty of them for

their original audience as well. suppose the plain truth is, isn't

it really that after all the Anglo- Saxons are German so this is the

origin. It's sort of a BMW-style engineering which we unfortunately

have grown out of but they still The exquisite designs and

craftsmanship displayed in the hoard have shed new light on the

skill and sophistication of our Under each stone you have got a

piece of war for patterned gold foil, to scatter the light back --

a pattern like a waffle. Just like on a reflector in a motor-car.

you get the measurements on the screen, each one of those is about

0.03 of a millimetre across. It is incredible. Something like this

could have been warned by a Royal to, like the mercy in King. Or one

of the people who sent into the next world, this is material that

belongs to the losers and this could have been taken from Oswald

of Northumbria or the king of Kent. We do not know, it is dangerous to

try to ascribe the names to material like this but it is great

fun! As I've travelled across the old Kingdom of Mercia, it's become

clear to me just how important the discovery of the hoard really has

been. It's shone a light into the Midlands of the Dark Ages,

revealing a powerful, wealthy and sophisticated people, who were a

force to be reckoned with in the Anglo-Saxon world. And in an

amazing stroke of luck, it's also captured a moment, a turning point

in our history, when Britain became The discovery of the Staffordshire

Hoard is literally causing the But we've also found that this

discovery raises many fresh questions. Questions that

scientists and historians will There are many more surprises for

the hoard yet to give up and what we think we now know may yet be