 Yn gymgyrchu 10 o'r sgafodd Lleodraeth o'r adrodd mae'r edryd yn gyffredinol i ddweud nhw'r程diad â'r reilethau rhai o'r sgafodd â'r adrodd, sy'n cael ei ddweud hynny'n rhoi riddyl concerning. Efallai allan o'r brydau'r cyfrwm? Rydyn ni'n sgafodd a ddwy'r ddweud yn deunydd? Dwy wedi rhoi yw'r bod hynny'n ei ddechrau a leol. Roedd y cwestiynau'r ddweud yw'r cyfnod yn byw? A yna ydych chi'n bwysig yn y ffyrwyr ar gyfer y cwestiynau? Roedd y ddweud y cyfnod yn gwneud yn gweithio'r cyfrifol. Mae'r meddwl cysylltu, mae'r bobl yn fwy o'r cyfrifol, o'r cylliastol ar gyfer ymylch, i ddwy'r cyflwyffau'r llyfr, a'r rhagwch yn eithaf. Yn hyn, ni'n dweud i ddweud i'r cyflwyffau, oherwydd ei ddweud i ddweud i'r cyflwyffau, sy'n ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i'r cyflwyffau, ac yn ddweud i'n ochr, sy'n ddweud i'r cyflwyffau synghreidau synghreidau o'r cyflwyffau. But without a precise archaeological date for the year of deposition and the commensurately detailed and reliable historical record of the period, it lies beyond our knowledge. Some might choose to ignore these facts and propose a single answer by pining hypothesis upon hypothesis. Our approach, however, has been to accept that complex and conflicting evidence leads to multiple alternatives. Composed in 2017, the chapter What Does It Mean is therefore tentative, not definitive. It is open to debate and falsification. Other possible routes through the evidence might well have eluded us, and speakers to follow will no doubt point these out. I can only outline the routes that we took, not give a full rehearsal of the arguments for which you must read chapter 10 and the rest of the book yourselves. Recent theorised discussions of hoarding practices, especially by pre-historians, framed our approach. These have established two aspects, critical to hoard analysis. Object biography and the context of deposition. Since the contents of the hoard constitute the bulk of our data, their analysis has been the primary focus. As Chris outlined, unraveling how, where and when the objects were made, what roles, both practical and symbolic, they performed in life and how they were treated at the end, has yielded a rich store of information. An outlined life story has emerged from not only individual pieces, but the hoard as a whole. Previously, we see that the hoard was formed over a lengthy period, almost certainly episodically, between the late 6th and the mid 7th centuries. Moreover, the objects were of the highest value, not just economically, but also ideologically, made for and possessed by the topmost level of society, the temple and spiritual members of early Anglo-Saxon royal retinues. The second critical aspect for analysis, the context of deposition, has been much harder to access because of the circumstances of discovery and the limited extent of and results from on-site professional field work. Although the strikingly selective nature of the objects and their systematic dismantling provide some exceptional insights as the final stage or stages of the hoard's life, these can barely be related to a situation on the ground. Also, understanding the surrounding local and regional historical landscape depends, as yet, on a limited range of evidence. The last context in the contextual argument had to come from general comparisons, with what is known about 6th and 7th century Anglo-Saxon England from history and archaeology, and about hoarding practices from case studies of near contemporary and geographically close societies in late Roman and post Roman Britain and 4th to 7th century mainland Europe of Scandinavia. These reveal how diverse practice was in the past and how diverse archaeological interpretation is in the present. They offer many resonances with the Staffordshire Horde, but no precise overall parallel. Armed with these various perspectives and detailed observations, we try to chart path through the contending factors at stake. First, the hoard had to be assembled. It was obviously impossible to pinpoint when and how each item joined the collection, but we could sketch plausible general context in which the objects came into being, were distributed and then brought together. Fundamental was appreciation of the value of movable wealth to early medieval societies. The social and political roles which bestow a prestigious gift on the one hand and the profits of warfare on the other hand played in bonding together hierarchical warrior communities. The fact that probably all the objects had been made outside Mercia meant that there must also come a time when objects from which the hoard was drawn had all arrived in Mercia, a notional last gathering. We consider a cumulative process more plausible than a single climactic military action, with objects acquired by multiple engagements, pitch battles, raids and diplomacy between Andy and Dynast ending up in a Mercia royal treasury. Although we endure associating the hoard with an identifiable historical person or occasion, the eventful careers of King Pender of Mercia and his immediate heirs, which coincide with the archaeological dating of the hoard, provide many provocative models for the kinds of circumstance that might have been involved. Finally, objects were chosen for dismantling, followed by further selection. Probably not long afterwards, the resultant assemblage was buried, possibly in a container and partly wrapped in cloth. The burial site was positioned at the end of a ridge of land and on the perimeter of some sort of natural circular feature which perhaps supported distinctive vegetation. The red circle is one from one aerial photograph, the green arcs from another, but the green in the excavation proved to be ice wedges. So far, there is no evidence or second or burial in the field with which it lies. The area where the field lies is in general noted for its marginal character, environmentally, culturally and politically. However, the site does lie overlooking Watling Street and not far from its junction at Wall with Brickneild Street, which are two Roman roads that gave vital access from the Midlands respectively into Wales and to Northumbria. So, the site of the hoard is in a liminal place, but at the same time it was easily accessed and knowable. To draw in together all these points, we came to two major but not necessarily wholly exclusive explanations for why the hoard was created and posited. The first proposes it was the outcome of a regular elite practice of decommissioning and recycling precious materials in order to make control of them and access to the power that they embodied. This interpretation makes good sense of much of the accumulated evidence, except of course for the final burial, which would have to be explained away by some sudden and dramatic turn of events. It also undervalues the fact that the objects chosen were highly charged symbols of regal and religious authority. With the helmet and the ecclesiastical equipment in particular, unlikely has been party to a process of regular redistribution or recycling. The second explanation therefore argues that the objects were deliberately chosen to put beyond further use for ideological reasons, whether those be social, political or what I choose to call superstitious. That we have relatively little evidence at this time in England, but the practice of ritual deposition or ritual destruction does not mean that such acts can be ruled out. They might be more present and more varied than we have hitherto suspected. Indeed, to pick up on the points that have been made at least twice already this morning, Sue Brunning's recently published research on swords adds to the argument. She's shown that both blades and the hilt of a sword wielded symbolic agency as embodiments and companions of their warrior owners, but it was the hilt above all that signified individuality and identity. So the emphasis and the horde on hilt fittings at the expense of blades and more or less at the expense of scabbards or harness underlies a symbolic and ritualised character. Though of course, as we've also noted already, it begs what happened to the missing parts. Were they subjects of different codes of meaning and practice and so recyclable? Many layers of the horde's meaning are manifestly still hidden from us, and I expect you will pick up on the limitations in our arguments during discussion. But to finish, here are a few things that have occurred to me since submission of the text in 2018. First, I'd reiterate that envisaging possible scenarios for the assembly and deposition of the horde must take account of the elasticity in the dating. Persuases with Chris's analysis are, dating still with depends on few fixed points. In particular, it's noticeable how parallels with Sutton Hoo and other datable East Anglian material pool the majority of horde phase 3 objects to about the 610s to the 630s. Whereas the similarly connected Christian objects seem to me to be turned more towards the 650s or to around 650, rather because of historical and archaeological presumptions. Similar tensions, including the problematic dating of the earliest insular mansions sprit, pushed dating of the early insular style of horde phase 4, and thus the horde's terminus post quen, to the mid 7th century. Only further information and perhaps analysis of the thought that Cairnwell and Nilsson has suggested we undertake will confirm matters. Second, our theoretical approaches to the horde have been fairly rudimentary. I'm hoping that Richard Bradley and others more versed than I in such matters can point out where we should have gone or might get go. There must be scope to develop theoretical approaches that can tease out more about the horde, and perhaps in turn for its complexity to yield advances in hoarding theory. Likewise, I expect John Blair will suggest where further exploration of the historical context might enhance understanding of the horde. His Magisterial Survey of Anglo-Saxon Settlement, which came out after we wrote chapter 10, has already struck chords with me on three points in particular. He characterises the 7th century as the age of great horde complexes, when extravagant display in the elite burials and elite settlement foci was tied more to the ritual of early kingship than to the exigences of political and military roles. Now, although the Staffordshire Horde publication recurs on several occasions to great horde sites such as Rendlesham and Liminge, and I even imagined horde objects as war trophies hanging on their walls, it is now even clearer how incidentally the horde belongs to that behaviour of extravagant gifting and display, and how in turn those rituals might have given rise to the horde. In his emphasis on the impermanence of the contemporary secular-built environment, John also provides a new perspective on why apparently there is no evidence for other contemporary activity on the horde find spot, apart from the single copper alloy horse harness mount, which belongs to horde phase 4 chronologically. In particular, John stresses the role of tents in a mobile elite lifestyle of hunting, fighting and assembly attendants. Had the find place been the scene of such activity, it is unlikely that a limited post-discovery fieldwork 2009 and 2010, or even the whole field controlled metal detecting of 2012 would have recognised it, and it raises queries about how fruitful further intensive fieldwork might be. Of course, the absence of evidence may indeed be genuine, indicating that the site was never used except to bury the horde itself. Finally, we have always recognised that greater investment in the study of the wider topographic context will probably offer important insights into the nature and circumstances of the deposition. Again, in drawing together his own work and that of other landscape archaeologists, John Blair alludes to a range of factors that conditioned early Anglo-Saxon royal engagement with the landscape, including the importance of a cattle economy, the practice of hunting, the presence of earthworks and integration with sites of popular cult practice. All of those might be applicable to the place of the Staffordshire horde and the landscape. With that, I stop and hand over the challenges for explanation to you and our subsequent speakers.