 Yn ymdeithasio yw'r ffordd i'r cymdeithasio ar gyfer hynny, am y gweithio'r ffordd i'r hanes ar gyfer hynny'r adrodd. Mae Stafatio hordd yn ysgol yma'r unrhyw wedi'r drosffordd a'r gyflawn cymdeithio'r disglu. Mae'r pethau gweithio'r gwerth o'r treffor a'r anhygoel o'r anhygoel o'r anhygoel o'r anhygoel o'r anhygoel o'r anhygoel o'r gwaith. o bwysig unig gwbl yn cyfrifio o'r gweithio. Mae'r ddiwylliant yng Nghymru, ac mae'r ddweud o'r Llesiadau Fynghorwyr. Mae'r gweithio o grwpiool yn gweithio'r llyfriddau o'r ffordd, arweithio arweithio, ac o'r rhwngorio, oherwydd yn ffordd o'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'r cuirwyddych oedd ymddangos sydd ar gyfer y dda o gyfwyd yng Nghymru, yn 2009, yn cael ei gael ysgolwyr ac ymddych yn ymddych. Ond y gallwn y ddweud yma, yw'r ddweud yma, yw'r ddweud yma i'w ddweud yma? Yn y ddweud, mae'n gweithio'r ffraeg yma o'r ddweud yma yw'r ddweud, mae'r ddweud yma o'r ddweud yma o'r ddweud yma, yn ymddych i'r debyd yma i'r ddweud yma i'r ddweud yma, Give them a full taste of the final publication, a book under the Society of Antiquaries imprint, with an integrated digital component hosted by the Archaeology Data Service that will be free to everyone to write. Ie, kliw'r ddeithas gael y ddysgu'r serdd i'r rhai ddredigr. Yr hyn o'r gweithio'r ddechrau, mae'n meddwl i'r ddweud o'r ddau cyfwyr ddim yn ei enyf, a'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, er mwyn i'r ddweud. Ond rwy'n gweithio'n ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud. I shall set out the essential character of the Horde, its typology and its chronology, and Tanya will then take over and present the case of what we think the Horde is, viewing its historical and architectural context, and the arguments for why it might have been created and posited. The Horde was found on a ridge of land close to the modern A5 and N6 toll roads, just to the north of Birmingham. The metal detectors to discover it, Terry Herbert, spent over a week with hovering finds before he reported his involvement discovery to the port of antiquity scheme. Then professional archaeologists became involved. Initially, Staffordshire County Council staff dug a one-meter test that is over the find spot. This has expanded into a full recovery excavation undertaken with Geo-Fiscal Survey by Birmingham Archaeology, and they conducted a further episode of fieldwork in 2010. Later, in 2012, Archaeology Warwickshire undertook more surveying, including controlled metal detection, that recovered a small number of further fragments and finds from the Horde. Knowledge of what the Horde contained has changed significantly as the challenging task of cleaning and re-joining has proceeded. From almost 4,600 fragments at the end of conservation, nearly 700 objects have been identified. This was no mean feat, but from the outset the owners of the Horde were committed to keeping as much of its own public display as possible. This often resulted in fragments from more than one object being involved in one location. Whilst the majority of the fragment of relationships were identified by 2014, some objects did not fully emerge until late in the research project, and one of them should be illustrated here. This is the object. This rather strange object is a socketed stand that we believe was a socketed stand for a great gold cross in the collection. It was assembled from over 60 pieces of silver sheet and lead strip, and it wasn't recognised until 2016. This example underlines how the fragility of the silver sheet has caused an inverse relationship between weights and fragment counts in the Horde. The four kilograms of gold and 1.7 kilograms of silver is reversed by the silver fragment count. The silver is far more fragmented than the gold. Whilst many of the objects retain garnets, or more rarely other inlays, there is very little copper alloy, virtually no iron, and only vestigial traces of organic materials, including borne, wood, and wax protein pastes, and glues. These would all have been essential components of the artefact in which almost all the fittings had been removed. The content of the board was thus highly selected, favouring precious leather. The objects were also drawn on time from the possessions of men and the apparatus of war, even arguably the Christian objects. The majority, 80% by object count, are fittings from weapons. Most come from swords, with a small number from sacksies, that is large fighting knives. There are a range of forms and ornaments, some quite new, are transforming our understanding of the weapon, its makers, and its warriorly users. On the basis of the minimum number of poles, that is 74, and potential combinations of other fittings presently, we estimate that something like 100 swords were dismantled. With one certain exception, they appear to be of Anglo-Saxon manufacture, and that exception is this one up here, pole 68, which has animal art that indicates a Scandinavian origin. It may or may not be associated with this strange object here, which is a swordry. Most of the poles take a cocked hat form, and fit within Mae genes-type bec of course scenario, which was in use between circle 570 and 650. A smaller number are round-backed forms, a form that in Anglo-Saxon England was in use in the 70th century. The 98 gold hillcolors include a remarkable 40 pairs. Hillcolors could be tall, like this one, or narrow, and they were fitted at the top and the bottom of the grip of the sword. We also have an array of hillt rings, these fittings here. This example here is very similar to a pair that are fitted to the second boom, the man of one sword. There are over 170 hillt plates in the collection, and you can see again on the diagram on the schematic where these would have fitted. From the form of the plate and from marks left on from fit other fittings on the hillt, it has been possible to say where on the sword they were fitting. And from that we've been able to say something about the number of sets and how proportionate that amount is with the other types of fitting. Unlike the forms discussed so far, the over 100 small mounts are decidedly unfamiliar. Many are decorated with a very fine filigree scrollwork ornament, and it was only after a trip to the British Museum to inspect the so-called Cumberland Hillt of preserved form, but their purpose became apparent. They were made to be inserted into recesses cut into the grip and guards, secured by nails and presumably some form of glue. You can see the extra here showing the nails used only on Cumberland Hillt, and we have similar small nails in the board with these fittings. Also importantly, their association with a sword hillt without a metal pommel in this case implies that the number of weapons represented in the horde is more than the 74 surviving pommels. Some hillt mounts are new forms, so they have a few following parallels. They include pairs and sets of zooborphic form from the grips, like these bird-heading mounts, and this bird mount here. You can see where these would have fitted on the grips. And then there are also sets of these beam-shaped fittings, which it took a little while to work out where they came from, and these too would have been fitted onto the guards. You can see here we have a set of four indicating mounts to the top and the bottom guard of the sword. Most of the fittings come from hills. There's very few fittings from scabbards, and this is a selection of the fittings from scabbards. We have five sets, five pairs of sword pyramids, and these would have fitted somewhere on the scabbard like this, and we also have a pair of these little sword buttons. And beside that, we have just three buttons, which may or may not have been part of sword harness. In some, the sword fittings reveal an array of styles best appreciated from those forming sets, and they indicate unquestionably that sword hills were manufactured as matching suites in the period. The different styles, if you'd like to do it, could reflect the outcomes of different regions or kingdoms. Whilst fittings in gold with filigree wire ornament, like this one at the end here, and with the animal designs in saline style 2 appear most favourite, we also have sets of clozzone fittings, and then we also have, as I've said, the sets of small fittings for a cumbland hilt type style. The clozzone style pommels are most like the pommel on the sapagoo mount on the sword, and the clozzone workmanship of many pieces also finds its closest powers in the same reader assemblage. Cast work is rarer and mostly in silver. Completely new is the style of sword fittings in silver with gold mounts. It is exemplified as shown here by Pommel 76 with its extraordinary double fixed sword ring knobs on its shoulders that are unique in Europe, an associated hilt collar while they date, and then there's a pair of also unique silver guards with gold filigree mounts. As well as gold filigree, the suite also has garlic and glass clozzone, and here is an artist's reconstruction of what this set of fittings would have originally looked like on the sword hilt. The horn contains a remainder of at least one crested helvet, similar to examples from Scandinavia and England, most notably, again, the second loom mount one, but yet more magnificent because it was originally largely gold in appearance and not silver. Nothing remains, however, of an original iron cap, so reconstruction has proved a challenge, and this reconstruction work is undertaken with George Speak. We've been given special permission today to show the reconstruction of the helmet which will be officially released to the public tomorrow, so keep an eye on the papers for this. The surviving structural parts include two-section crest piece and a pair of silver-gilt cheek pieces, both decorated with complex style to anamart. The crest would have held a horsehair or possibly feather material, a feature that was not found on any of the other helmets, a parallelist from the early medieval world, but which is well known on their ultimate models, Roman helmets. There is also a curved silver band around the base of the helmet, which contained a stamped-gilt silver sheet showing meaning worries. Here is the style of two-anamart from the cheek pieces. Many other designs have been reconstructed from the well over one thousand fragments of the diamond-pressed silver-gilt sheet, including ones again in anamart, style two anamart, and most strikingly, figal seams of marching, riding and dancing aristocratic warriors. Arguably, this is now the grandest of the known cresting helmets. It presents a symbolic narrative embodying religious beliefs and probably, possibly, dynastical origin legends. Surely, we can do it whilst fit for a king. Many of the over twenty large mounts in the hall fall sets, and most of them are heavily inlaid with garments. Possibly they are made from a single workshop. Some could come from ostentatious military parade gear, as suggested here, like a saddle. In the case of this mount, little inset mounts, each of which is decorated with a little filigree serpent. Then we have these two pieces from a silver set of mounts with the yellow decoration, again imitating cross-eye, and with a pair of eye-shaped mounts. We suggested this as fittings from a horse's eye. However, it must be stated that the function of many of these large mounts remains uncertain. Most unexpectedly, some of the large mounts reveal ecclesiastical treasures created for and by the first and second generation of the early Anglo-Saxon Church. The inscribed strip has been subject to much debate. The yellowed text on the obverse here, and a slightly different rendering on the reverse, comes from the Book of Numbers. In Richard Gaineson's translation for our publication, shown here, Moses's invocation of God's protection for the Israelites in the wilderness spoke them when the Ark of the Covenant was raised up, takes on a new ferocity. His endorses the hypothesis that the strip was part of a cross, mounted on a relic reshine, designed to be taken into battle. Provocatively, one feasible reconstruction, for one set of cross-eye fittings with eye-shaped mounts is as fittings for an Ark or a house-shaped shrine. Gaineson also argues that there is nothing to oppose the seventh-century date for the inscribed strip. Also, significantly, the technical similarity of this flattened, de-shaped boss at the end of the strip is so similar to one on the lower leg of the Great Cross, to which I shall turn next slide. It suggests a similar at the shared origin. The Great Gold Cross, found folded but reconstructed to a height of about 30 centimetres, could have been both carried into battle processionally, or it could have also functioned in a stand as an altar cross. Based on the Roman Cross' grammata, in gold, its gold and blood red would have recalled the cross of victory that played a major role in the elite reception of Christianity since Constantine's vision at the Milbian Bridge in the fourth century. The Anglo-Saxon dream of the room also describes just such a vision. The portent was all covered with gold, beautiful gems appeared at the corners of the earth, and there were also fire upon the cross beam. The accomplished integration of fluid-style tomb animal decoration and red garnet bosses that symbolise the wounds of Christ with the mound of gold gothler at the base of the cross is remarkable. Moreover, one analogue motif from the arm of the cross has been shown to be a copy of one that decorates the rooms of maple wood cups in the southern boom mound of one burial, a burial co-indated to surface 620 to 640. Cross and inscribed strip, therefore, made date from about or just before the mid-seventh century. So, two like this remarkable sub-conical mound, the mid-column and disc-mount on top, but is linked with the cross, artistically sharing very similar style to analogue. Leslie Webster argues that it is a bishop's headdress. A realisation of seventh-century Anglo-Saxon conceptions of Jewish high priest's headgear has also portrayed in the image of Ezra in the co-dex of Anglicanus. Typological analysis has thus taken a subway towards establishing the character of the hall. But to explain how it came into being and why it was buried, we must first establish where and where it was made, where its objects were made. The concept of object biography or life history has been apparent in archaeology for some time. But it is particularly commended as a way for considering how halls were formed, the reuse of the objects within them, within them, and looking at their deposition. The Staffordshire Hall is producing enormous range of information about its production and about early Anglo-Saxon manufacture in general. Most significant for this lecture is the evidence from the filigree of the close eye work. The filigree dominates the hall. It decorates about 60% of its objects. But whilst much of it compares well with artefacts from Kentish Southern England, atylical forms point to significant production beyond this area. This is an analysis undertaken with need work field, with an extensive knowledge of filigree in the early world. The ultimate inspiration for these filigree fittings, collars and poles, may well have been earlier 6th century fittings that we find on Scandinavian sorts. The close eye, by contrast, especially the zoomorphic designs within the close eye, as well as the mushroom and arrow geometric cell patterns and the use of gold-lidded surface, are all technical and artistic details that are best found out in East Anglia, notably in the South Pole. Indeed, the distribution of the 15 gold and gold garnet poles and hill fittings that are now known from outside of the hall, which this map shows, suggests that much of the material in the collection could have emanated from Anglia in areas north of the Tendons, including from the Kingdoms of East Anglia, Lindsay and North Anglia. A study of where repair and modification of the fittings was also a consideration when putting together the catalogue. Every object was assessed for a consideration of its wear and repair and modification. For example, wear patterns on pommels and on the tips of fittings, showing that these are the areas on a sword that seem to be most vulnerable to wear. We suggest that this probably reflects swords being worn habitually at the waist as a piece of costume, and that this is the result of the hilt of the sword rubbing against clothing. On the whole, it was found that the differential degrees of wear on the fittings correlated with the chronology of the objects and their suggested typology and style. Given the rare typological character of most of the objects, the absence of coins and as yet insufficient material with which to conduct absolute scientific dating, the animal art that decorates much of the collection has proved to fundamentally to establishing the horde chronology. Only animal art has long been used in animal sex and archaeology to date artefacts and context in general. Salim style one, shown here, occurs on just two fittings, and it's an art of the later fifth and sixth centuries in England. In fact, this pair of hilt colours with their highly disarticulated style one may well be the obvious objects in the collection. In comparison, objects with the following style, Salim style two of the later sixth and seventh centuries, occurs on 140 objects in total. My research proposes that the two distinctive forms of style two known from Anglo-Saxon England that are seen in the horde reflect chronological rather than regional difference. And to summarise simply, the early form of the ornament of style two comprises highly abstract legless sewer wharf creatures. These are very strange creatures. You have their jaws, their heads, and these serpent-like poins. Whilst the later form is counter-intuitively comprises more recognisable quadruped animals, I dated these two forms of style two by comparison with animal art objects from graves found across Europe, which are also stated scientifically all by poins. Taken together, the chronological argument identified four overlapping phases of production in the horde. The first consists of relatively few objects, mainly in silver during the sixth century. These would have come from heirloom swords, and the fittings had affinities with objects from kens in Scandinavia. The vast majority of the collection, however, comprises objects in gold. Horde phase two is characterised by the filigree fittings, by the use of early style two, and by Cumberland hilt style fittings decorated in this role. It is dated to about 570 to 630. That's the date of the manufacture of these objects. Horde phase three is marked by the garnet croissant, and later style two used. It starts perhaps around 610, and it lasts up to about the mid-seventh century. Finally, the few silver items with gold mounts and a dense form of interlace representing an early insular style we've placed around the mid-seventh century. From this we have concluded that Horde was probably deposited between 650 and 675, and I shall now hand over to Tanya. So what does this all mean? Theologists pretended to interpret cords in a binary manner, either as economically valuable materials that were hidden for safe keeping, but for some reason not recovered, or as objects committed permanently for ritualised reasons to engage with the supernatural, as gifts for the gods or as accompanents for the dead. Studies informed by modern archaeological theory, as recently and implicitly outlined by Richard Bradley, suggest, however, that hoarding practices were far more complex. The structuring and the motives behind hordes, a horde biography, so to speak, may be revealed by combining detailed analysis of their intrinsic contents with the examination of the extrinsic context in the ground and in the landscape. Much has been third from internal evidence about constituent character of the Staffordshire Horde as Chris has just outlined. To repeat, in its material, art and symbolism, it belongs to the pinnacle of 7th century Anglo-Saxon masculine and martial society. It represents the powers, secular and spiritual on which kings depended. Yes, it was in fragments, deliberately dismantled and selectively assembled. Unfortunately, external evidence relating specifically to the hord's context is limited. So our model biography depends more on historical and archaeological knowledge of the late Roman and early medieval worlds that engendered the horde and which would be abyserbated by our fellow contributors of publication. Whilst the artefacts can be compared generally to finds elsewhere in high status contexts, there is nothing that completely matches the horde's combination of multiple weaponry, precious material and fragmentation. Certainly not among the well-known princely barrels of late 6th and early 7th century England, or even the war sacrifices of South Scandinavian wetlands of the 4th to 5th centuries, or in the abundant corpus of treasure hordes, whether from late 4th to 5th century Britain or from the 4th to 7th century England, Europe and Scandinavia. In fact, the diversity of these near-contemporary hoarding practices rather than the supply of later managers forces us to consider a range of models, especially given that hordes in general are rare in the late 5th to 7th century England. So how did the horde come together? We suggest that the savage horde was buried at some time in the 3rd quarter of the 7th century. At this date, its findspot lay wither in the territory of Mercia, the marches, or hordes, the last major Anglo-Saxon kingdom to emerge into history, but not yet the power it would become in the 8th century. According to the not always consistent pages of these ecclesiastical history and the later historic Britonum, Mercia was born of protracted warfare waged by its pagan king, Pender, often in alliance with Welsh kings and mainly against Anglia neighbours to the east, in particular Northumbria. The 650s seemed to have been particularly turbulent with the deaths of Pender at the Battle of the Wingways at 655, and a year later the murder of his recently converted son, Peoda before another son, Wolfhair, was eventually restored to the throne. Wolfhair and his brother Evelwet then enjoyed long reigns, the continuing expansion of the kingdom through Wolfhair but particularly to the south. We've also suggested that the objects in the horde mainly came from areas controlled by Anglia kings, most of them, as Chris said, Lindsay, East Anglia and Greater Northumbria. Mercia itself laid a cultural boundary between Anglians and Britons as expressed by Firlish Barrow near at least the new run and by the incident of metal detected fires. The first act of settlement is evident in the middle Tread Valley from the late fifth century onwards and in the 7th century the Peak District is characterised by which Barrow burrows there is nothing to suggest that the mercians were manufacturing prestige equipment in the way other kingdoms were. The objects in the horde have been bought into Mercia but how? Circulation of movable wealth was fundamental to building and maintaining early medieval policies. Here in the Ohan Nicolai is the rendering of Royman's 1990 model. Just as in the late Revan Empire the material forms a life history of treasure and the context of their gifting or exchange embodied hierarchical relationships of status and obligation between giver and receiver. Less like the Revan Empire however early Anglo-Saxon kings paid especially on warfare to recoup and supplement their stock of treasure and thus to maintain the system. We imagine that both pitched battles and raids on rival seats or monasteries could have delivered booty compensation payments and tribute which would underlie the horde material. The weaponry in the horde was probably made in elite workshops for circulation among leaving members of royal retinues. Some of the items represented by the large mounts like putative saddles could have played a role in a lines building between dillustins. The ecclesiastical treasures might have been gifts to or products of churches but they and iconic items like the helmet are unlikely to have circulated widely if at all. Given the date range of the horde objects they must have joined horde cumulative and probably episodically but we cannot specify exactly when or how each individual item came to form part of treasures nor how they then entered Mercia. Nor, without better historical evidence can we assign their final gathering and subsequent deposition in Mercia to particular events in the past. There the circumstances leading up to and beyond the battle of the Wingways provides several provocative and opposite general models. Or, towards the end, the assemblage underwent extensive damage with fissings systematically if crudly stripped away. Evidence of knives used cut or lever and tools like tongs to pull off pommels is widespread amongst the material and it's likely that this was the work of Smiths who also would have had the skills necessary to select out only the precious metals and it's noticeable that there's very little guilt copper alloy. One explanation for all this is that it was part of a regular process of precious metal control. De-commissioning goods in order to recycle their war materials is a new object for a new round of circulation. But if so, the job was only half done. It's possible that some of the missing fittings might already have found their way into a crucible but the items that were retained still included garments and other material. Such a functional explanation also overlooks the extremely selective character of the objects. Supreme symbols of the power of a king rather than a random or sensible sample from a royal treasury. The alternative is that according to an ideological act a deactivation of the object's symbolic agency perhaps as part of the defeat of humiliation of a political rival or because the materials actually perceived as tainted and too dangerous to be kept. The apparently gratuitous removal of an arm of the cross pendant and what one might say was the effective defacement of the helmet might support this argument. Of course, recycling might also have accommodated such pendants but if so, that task was interrupted by unknowable events leading instead to burial. Alternatively, burial has always been the intention. So finally, we turn to the context of burial and sadly this is where we have least evidence. Only 13% of the fragments have no locations and then only to the one meter grid squares used in the excavation. There's spread over something like 215 square metres under entirely within or even on top of the plows soil but the distribution does suggest a core area of about three to four metres of square. The mixture of small fragments, especially of silver in the 21 soil blocks which were reportedly removed from a two metres square area could represent the filtrate at the base of a pit but the plowing that finally disturbed the treasure had removed all evidence of context and the only indications of the items might have been put into containers or perhaps into bags are the folding of some objects and a single fragment of textile. The horde lay at the northern end of a ridge of land that's the Dash Line and that was the area of the excavation I showed you from the last slide. And everyone photographs have revealed some sort of circular feature at this point which is the width. Geophysical survey have captured two concentric rings in the same place which were identified in excavation as naturally occurring ice wedges but which have been suggested could have supported some sort of distinctive vegetation. The horde lay between and over the ice wedges. There is nothing else in the field that has been observed to indicate its use until its enclosure in the 19th century. The only other evidence of Anglo-Saxon activity is a dismount from horse harness in the art style of our horde phase four. The distance of the two located fragments from the horde itself suggests that the mount was probably not part of the horde but either a casual loss by some contemporary visiting horsemen or a deliberate but separate deposit. The last clues to the horde's meaning lie in its topographic location. On the one hand, this seems peripheral. Environmentally, the area was part of cannot chase exploited for its wood and heathland resources but marginal to agriculture until the 18th and 19th centuries. Culturally, as we've already seen, it was on the fringe of early Anglo-Saxon penetration. Physically, it lay between several small folk territories that became incorporated into the Kingdom of Mercia. The Pempercerta to the west of Hampton Chase, Wednisfeld, a Royal Estate to the south west, and the Tomaserta to the east, where Mercia's Bishop Road was founded in 669 at Lichford Field, and later, of course, Townloth was developed as a secular centre. On the other hand, the site overlooked Walklead Street, the major road in the road leading from southeast England into Wales, and it is near its junction at Wall with Wricklead Street, the route from Mercia into Northumbria. The site was thus eminently accessible and perhaps had been marked by a distinctive better station that had not been quite identifiable. Yet it was also liminal, it was out in the landscape, exactly the sort of place which was used in prehistory for ritualised deposition and in the early Middle Ages for assemblers. There are then multiple possibilities for exploring and explaining the Staffordshire Horde, as well as many uncertainties. I've been able to give you only a glimpse of the arguments to date, and we're fully aware that they leave considerable scope for further debate, questions and more research. In the end, it is actually impossible to say why the Horde was treated as it was, but our two leading suggestions are these. It was an assemblage of royal treasure in transition between decommissioning and recycling, but where completion of this trajectory has been arrested by unknown circumstances, leading to a final deposition. Or it was the deliberate and permanent removal of royal treasure from circulation for political, superstitious or religious reasons. Thank you.