National Geographic TV had a one hour show on the Staffordshire hoard that I saw this afternoon. It did a great job of recreating the discovery using the actual guy who found it and the farmer who owned the land and all the archeologists that got involved.
The sheer number (1600) of pieces of gold was staggering. But they didn’t find a lot of silver or things of daily use so it was clearly a trove of plunder acquired from rapine of an opposing army.
Also Showed film of a lot of the stuff as it was actually being dug up by the archeologists. Most of it was either gold decorative pieces from armor like gold pommels from swords or church crosses and the like. Looked like plunder from a battle perhaps where they stripped the armor of valuables gold ornaments but kept the steel swords and armor for use.
One interesting thing is that area of the field where it was found is only about 100 yds from a busy highway. And as the farmer who owned the land said, the field had been plowed at least twice a year for 1300 years and the plowmen had to have come within inches of the trove—but it took a metal detector to seek out the stuff down those last few inches.
Thanks, wildbill, for the details on that program. I love the GGG articles, especially the ones about Egyptology and British history. It’s always refreshing when someone on the thread posts something useful and apropos to the topic, rather than just snarky wisecracks.