[meteorite-list] OT - Gold Hoard Found in England

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:44:33 -0500
Message-ID: <47CDDA9F0AE5472CB4983CA37B00F043_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Graham, Rob, List,

    The previous prize hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold
was found in a ship burial in Sutton Hoo in 1939.
It contained 1,500 grams of gold. News reports say
that over 5,000 grams have been removed from a
patch of ground with an area only 20 yards long
and down to a depth of about 14 inches, intermingled
with modern artiffacts. To date 1345 items have
been removed and officially declared "treasure trove"
yesterday by the South Staffordshire Coroner,
Andrew Haigh, rendering it property of the Crown
(I'm quoting The Independent here).

The last of the treasures came out of the ground
only three weeks ago and none has been cleaned.
The still-earth-covered collection is being kept in
secure storage at Birmingham Museum and Art
Gallery and a selection of the items will be displayed
at the museum from today until 13 October.

Always willing to speculate, it appears to me that
these treasures were buried, presumably by a Mercian
monarch or noble, to hide them and that whoever
buried them was defeated and unable to re-claim
his treasure. This is odd as Mercia was largely an
expanding power from the late 500's until
decisively defeated by Wessex in 825 AD. This
treasure is found in the very secure Mercian
heartland yet seems to have been lost because of
a Mercian defeat.

Scanning through the Kings of Mercia, I have
a candidate and a date. In the 600's there was a
very strong and successful Mercian King, Penda.
After a reign of successful battles against all
opponents, Penda was defeated and killed at the
Battle of Winwaed by the Northumbrian king
Oswiu in 655, ushering a series of failed Mercian
kings, a bitter civil war over succession, another
defeat by Northumbria, a king that was apparently
insane -- things were chaotic until the reign of
?thelbald (716-757).

It is my hypothesis that this may be the hoard
of Penda, buried for safekeeping before he rode
of to fight Oswiu. It is hard to imagine who in
Mercia would have a hoard of over 5 kilograms
of gold, if not the King himself ! Recall that Penda
fought and vanquished many kings and challengers
and much of this hoard is booty of war, stripped from
the bodies of the defeated. If it is as decribed, a badly
churned site, radiocarbon dates will be very mixed.
Its value as history is vastly greater than its gold
value of $160,000.

I suspect that future analysis and study will find
many different cultural traditions mixed into this
hoard (from all the defeated kingdoms from which
it is booty as well as Mercian work). There will likely
be cultural and stylistic differences from the Sutton
Hoo finds (which have an oddly close affinity to
Eastern Sweden). If I could see this stuff tomorrow,
I would Google up images of restored Sutton Hoo
items for comparison.

Rob, as far as it being the property of the Crown...?
Well, apart from the provision for "treasure troves" in
the law, it seems to me that it was originally the property
of the King of Mercia and as such possessions descend
by the succession of the kingship, one must ask who is
monarch of Mercia now? That person would seem to be
the rightful inheritor... and I believe we know that lady's
name.

How about that for a Monarchical argument from
a Revolutionary Colonial?


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: <ensoramanda at ntlworld.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:46 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] OT - Gold Hoard Found in England


> Hi Greg, Dean, All,
>
> This amazing hoard was found just a short distance away from me near a
> place called Brownhills at the side of the A5. Lots of discussion
> about its value on the news as usual. I think that in this case it
> will be classed as treasure as it was deliberately hidden ( I think
> the law is different if it is classed as lost ) and will not belong to
> the landowner or the finder, so will not be sold but go to the
> museums. Once valued their will be a reward allocated which in this
> case will belong to the finder as he got permission to search from the
> landowner. Apparently he has agreed to share that with the
> landowner...which only seems fair.
>
> I intend to visit the museum in Birmingham over the weekend to see
> this exciting historical find right on my doorstep.
>
> Graham Ensor, UK
>
>
> ---- dean bessey <deanbessey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > From: Greg Hupe <gmhupe at htn.net>
>> >
>> > think also that the true story is all about good luck and
>> > the willingness to get permission and agreements from
>> > property owners!
>> >
>> It is more than that. It is also an example of common sense
>> historical artifact laws at work. Britain has constructed their
>> artifact laws in such a way that it is in a finders best interest to
>> report all of their findings (It is also illegal to not report your
>> findings but that dont really give you much incentive and wont work
>> anyway).
>> As a result whenever artifact or coin hoards get found in UK
>> everybody who is interested gets to study them and learn as much
>> history as possible from the stash. And the actual finder gets more
>> money for them than if he tried to sell them in secret on the UNESCO
>> black market (Probably has to pay taxes on the sale of the hoard
>> also). Finder, science, general public, government, land owners -
>> everybody wins with british cultural property laws.
>> If this stash of gold was found in Italy, Israel, Egypt or Peru, the
>> site would have been very quickly destroyed behond recognition and
>> reburied (After dark and probably all in one night) to hide any
>> evidence of the sites existance, and the gold melted down, stamped
>> Johnson matthey and (With the governments full blessing) shipped out
>> of the country.
>> Rather than being studied by researchers as this hoard will be, it
>> would have gone on the next fed ex flight out and went directly from
>> the archaeological site to a swiss bank vault.
>> It would have been UNESCO at work
>> Sincerely
>> DEAN
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> http://www.meteoritecentral.com
>> Meteorite-list mailing list
>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
> ______________________________________________
> http://www.meteoritecentral.com
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Thu 24 Sep 2009 09:44:33 PM PDT