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Recent Archaeological Discoveries (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Hatty is quite right to say that a lot of the bodies are buried by incompetent predecessors. It never occurs to today's archaeologists, since techniques are always improving, that they too are by definition incompetent and that they in their turn will be roundly condemned for messing everything up by their successors. Meanwhile every kind of anomalous finding can be explained away with this alibi. Though mostly they prefer 'more research is needed' to account for errant findings. Or, as we have found with Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical archaeology, no findings at all.

It should also be pointed out that no amount of tampering by either man or nature renders organic things safe from the dread and overwatchful eye of carbon dating. Though of course tampering with the carbon dates has become something of an industry trade mark. Sorry, I meant 'interpreting' not tampering. I don't know why I said that.
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Hatty
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Historic England's report on the Blacknall Field dig is remarkably vague. There are archaeological records for only two finds, one of which is 'awaiting validation' while the other comes with a warning Object type certainty: Possibly.

It is
An incomplete, heavily ornamented early Anglo-Saxon scabbard mouth mount made from thick cast gilded silver with niello inlay

Half of it is missing but they can compare it with a fragment from another dig which had been analysed by the British Museum using x-ray technology

Analysis: Non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface of a mercury gilt fragment of a mount from Great and Little Chishill, Cambs, indicated a silver content of approximately 89%, the rest being copper and tin. The black inlay is niello of the silver sulphide type. Analysis carried out by the British Museum's Department of Conservation and Scientific Research (File No. 7492 41), 4th April 2012.

X-raying is not a dating tool but it’s OK because the scabbard mouth mount belongs to a ‘Saxon material-culture’

It joins a small corpus of Style I-decorated scabbard mouthpieces with expanded front panels, mostly from southern and western (Saxon material-culture) areas of England.


All this is immaterial because what's left of the scabbard mouth mount hasn't been properly tested. Analysis is replaced by a series of musings ('would have', 'would be', 'would probably have had' and so on)

This mount is from the mouth of a sword-scabbard. The surviving fragment retains part of a side tab, which would be mirrored on the other side. These would have wrapped around the top of the scabbard and both would probably have had undecorated ends, perhaps covered in leather to help secure the mount to the scabbard. The presence of possible iron pins may suggest that this was another way of fixing the mount to the leather.


Despite it being a “thoroughly English” design, they decided to look for examples further afield. Apparently it doesn’t quite conform to the Continental 'norm'

This group of scabbard mouthpieces tends to have geometric decoration above a projecting panel of Style I, but BH-A99B35 is slightly different to the norm, with several panels of Style II and no geometric decoration or ribbing. Other scabbard mouthpieces which have been allocated to Menghin's Högom-Selmeston group (e.g. Alfriston 89, Férébrianges in France, Skjoldelev in Denmark) differ more distinctly, with no projecting panel.


But, they claim, this fragment can be dated, albeit ‘broadly’, by style alone

This object can be broadly dated by its Style I art, which was certainly in use in England by 500 AD and may have continued in use to the end of the sixth century. The most likely date-range taking everything into consideration is late 5th or early 6th century, 480-550 AD.

Style is a more artful word for typology.
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Wile E. Coyote


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In 1927, workers constructing a bridge at Wareham made a discovery, it is now considered a Saxon sword, made in the late 900s.

There is a mythos around saxon swords eg Excalibur so folks are convinced that they were only used by the rich and powerful. The Bayeux tapestry has Harold and his men mainly fighting with spears. So this has reinforced the myth,by negative inference, that swords only belonged to the rich and powerful.

This Wareham sword was made of iron, with a horn grip. The hilt and roughly half the blade survives, with remains of intricate decoration on the guard and the pommel (end-piece). There is a partial inscription it reads ‘Æthel..... owns me’. The ‘Æthel’ part of the name was only used by members of the royal family and nobility of Wessex. So we infer that it is a royal sword. Wareham was an important town in Saxon times, and so inference two is that there was probably a royal palace here. Coins were minted in the town. Walls were built around the Royal town to defend it against attacks from Vikings.

This is going swimmingly Saxonly well......

There is just one problem, the inscription shows that the sword’s owner was a royal Saxon, but the style/typology of the decoration is "Viking".

So we must go on the typology? Hell no.......

We infer that the sword was won in battle, or was it a gift to ‘Æthel’?

But if it was a gift or won in battle is it really a Saxon sword??? Myths are powerful things. We want Saxon kings with famous swords with miraculous powers.

http://www.greenacre.info/WTM/page21.html
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Mick Harper
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As we wax so lovingly about over on the forgery threads, artefacts with their owner's name on form a typology (in the AE sense) all their own.

Mick wrote this.
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Hatty
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Mick Harper wrote:
artefacts with their owner's name on form a typology (in the AE sense) all their own.

Perhaps the most famous case is the inscribed 'Alfred had me made' jewel. It just so happens there's a ring inscribed with the name of Aethelwulf, Alfred's dad
The ring is inscribed "Æthelwulf Rex", firmly associating it with the King, and the inscription forms part of the design, so it cannot have been added later.



Illustration from Cassell's History of England - published circa 1902 [why circa?]

Provenance, suitably rustic, is 'a cart rut in Wiltshire, 1780'

The ring was found in a cart-rut at Laverstock (sometimes known as Laverstoke), Wiltshire, about August 1780 by one William Petty. Petty sold it to a silversmith (a Mr. Howell) in Salisbury and the then Earl of Radnor purchased it from him.

Following the Earl of Radnor's purchase 'from a silversmith in Salisbury', his son donated the ring to the British Museum in 1829. "It's been in the family for fifty years, don't you know."

Wiltshire is the county that just keeps on giving but wait... it's in the 'Trewhiddle style'

The ring, a particularly ambitious piece, was not the king's personal ring, but was presumably given as a gift or as a mark of royal office. Its fine Trewhiddle-style ornament would certainly fit a mid ninth-century date.

Trewhiddle refers to a unique Cornish hoard, originally collected, and published, by 'Cornwall's leading mineralogist' Philip Rashleigh, which has given its name to a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon style of art that became quite widespread in the 19th century. Nothing whatsoever to do with Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 2nd Earl of Radnor, being the MP for Salisbury and deputy lieutenant of Wiltshire.
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Hatty
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Another Alfred-related ring! This one is inscribed with the name of his sister, Aethelswith, 'the only known daughter of King Ethelwulf'.

The British Museum is naturally chuffed

The fortunate survival of two gold finger rings associated with the royal house of Wessex, almost certainly manufactured for the people whose names appear on them, provides valuable primary dating evidence for ninth-century metalwork. The inscription refers to King Æthelwulf of Wessex (839-58), father of Alfred the Great and of Queen Æthelswith of Mercia, whose name is incised on the bezel of AF.458.

Little is known about her, but according to the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ she married Burgred of Mercia in 853, lived abroad following his exile in 874 and died at Pavia in 888, whilst on a pilgrimage to Rome

Aethelswith appears to have been an afterthought.

There can be no doubt that the inscription on the Æthelwulf ring is contemporary, as it is an integral part of the design, but the one on the Æthelswith ring may have been added later, perhaps to commemorate a royal gift.

'Aethelswith' may be a later addition but how can they tell Aethelwulf's inscription is 'contemporary'?

...the use of niello, and the occurrence of Trewhiddle-style details on the Æthelswith ring, such as the nicked hindquarters of the Lamb, lend additional support for a ninth-century date.

The ring's iconography is "unusual" but at the same time the design is "typical of the uniformity of animal ornament in England in the 9th century". The curator at the BM ties the two strands together

The central design on the Æthelwulf ring represents the Christian symbol of two confronted peacocks flanking the Tree of Life. Ultimately derived from Late Antique sources, it is here almost unrecognisably translated into the native Trewhiddle-style.

The ‘Agnus Dei’ on the Æthelswith ring, although current in tenth and eleventh-century ecclesiastical metalwork and sculpture is rare in secular contexts. A ninth-century finger ring from Driffield, Yorkshire, now lost, has various features in common with the Æthelswith ring, including an inscription on the bezel and hoop which translates, “Behold the Lamb of God”.

These rings were probably not worn by the persons whose names are inscribed upon them, but should be viewed more as gifts, or as symbols of office bestowed upon faithful retainers, a practice documented during this period.

Some wear and tear is present, according to the Curator of the BM, but it's in amazingly good shape in the circs. The Earls of Radnor must have been careful owners

The ring's distorted condition and missing niello reflect the circumstances in which it was found, but it also shows signs of wear

https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?images=true&objectId=88977&partId=1
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Hatty
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The other Aethelswith ring comes from Aberford in West Yorkshire, but is also of the Trewhiddle school. Or so says Dr Caitlin Green

The Æthelswith Ring, an Anglo-Saxon gold & niello finger ring featuring Trewhiddle-style designs, found Aberford, Yorkshire. The central medallion shows the Agnus Dei and an inscription mentions Queen Æthelswith of Mercia, the sister of Alfred the Great

The provenance of this other ring is rather more plausible than the Wiltshire 'cart rut' scenario but, unlike Caitlin, the British Museum expresses mild astonishment

The ring was ploughed up between Aberford and Sherburn in 1870. By an extraordinary coincidence it is associated by its inscription to the ring of King Æthelwulf who was the father of Queen Æthelswith whose name appears on this ring.

The Aethelswith ring was owned by Canon William Greenwell (1820 - 1918), who'd originally trained as a lawyer but became a naturalist and antiquarian.

The ring was ploughed up in 1870 between Aberford and Sherburn, West Yorkshire and, it is said, was attached by the finder to the collar of his dog. It was purchased by a York jeweller who sold it to Canon Greenwell.

Greenwell wasn't a trained archaeologist but at the age of 38 started to dig up, and write about, barrows, accumulating a vast number of prehistoric artefacts most of which he sold to foreign collectors

With the money made from selling his collections he was able to repurchase his ancestral home, Greenwell Ford, which was then inherited by his nephew after his death

From the minutes of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society it seems that an agreement was made for the ring to pass to the Society after Canon Greenwell's death ...

1. That the Ring should be handed over to the Society after his death and that he would give such guarantee in writing in respect of this Condition as the Treasurer and Secretary should approve.
2. That he would on consideration that the Society would allow him to have possession of the Ring for his life on the above terms hand over to the Society as a free gift his valuable collection of Saxon Antiquities found in Yorkshire.

but instead a buyer with deeper pockets got the ring and would bequeath it to the British Museum

The ring was never again seen in Yorkshire. The matter is further raised in the Council Minutes of the same Society in November 1907, when it was recorded that representations had been made to Canon Greenwell on the subject of the ring which was by this time in the possession of the British Museum. The ring was still in the possession of Canon Greenwell in 1876 when it was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries by Franks. It probably passed into Franks's possession a short time after this and it came to the Museum in 1897 with the rest of the Franks bequest.
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Mick Harper
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Canon William Greenwell (1820 - 1918), who'd originally trained as a lawyer but became a naturalist and antiquarian.

These four 'jobs' come up time and again in our enquiries. The entire house of cards is erected on the fact that we cannot bring ourselves to believe in the base designs of professional people. Even though we are never surprised when they turn up in the criminal courts in every other sphere of human activity.

The ring was still in the possession of Canon Greenwell in 1876 when it was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries by Franks. It probably passed into Franks's possession a short time after this and it came to the Museum in 1897 with the rest of the Franks bequest.

With Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks KCB FRS FSA as the prince of all the thieves.
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Hatty
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Trewhiddle, site of a presumed hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins (hard to verify as they're reported as mostly 'dispersed'), is also by a very strange happenstance where a lump of tungsten was discovered

This is how the story broke in the International Tungsten Industry Association (ITIA) newsletter of 2004 which treats the lump as potentially the earliest attempt to produce tungsten

The recent find of a large and particularly heavy metal lump by D Coombe, from Trewhiddle Farm near St Austell, sparked considerable interest in its origin and purpose; in particular once it had been identified as comprising considerable amounts of tungsten metal. Following on from initial analyses by Brian Earl, and an in-depth investigation by the BBC in co-operation with the Natural History Museum in London in October 2004, it became apparent that this is a rare example of early tungsten metal, and that it may hold clues about the early history of tungsten production or tungsten research in southwest Britain

but how to go about dating it:

Another fundamental question is that of the likely date of this object, which was found as a surface find with no supporting dating evidence.

The analysis consists of speculation over tin smelting but, they say, the slag 'hasn't been studied in much detail'. Nor has anything else it seems

The use of charcoal as fuel for the smelting operation is interesting, and may help us to determine the approximate date of production for the bloom, either by radiocarbon dating, or by study of historical records and an understanding of the general use of charcoal and mineral coal / coke in Cornish metallurgy
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Hatty
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Why was only one lump of tungsten found at Trewhiddle? One can only conclude that the experts were taken in by a hoax.

The International Tungsten Industry Association's newsletter actually mentions that 'a known forger' was involved in the discovery:

There is speculation that this lump is tungsten metal, possibly pre-dating its presumed discovery in 1783, and a further twist to the story suggests the involvement of that scientist, man of letters, bankrupt and thief, Rudolph Erich Raspe, the author of “The Travels of Baron Munchausen"

https://web.archive.org/web/20090325000034/http://itia.info/FileLib/ITIA_Newsletter_June05.pdf

Rudolf was also a 'natural historian' as well as an antiquarian, in line with our forgery criteria

Rudolf Erich Raspe (March 1736 – 16 November 1794) was a German librarian, writer, and scientist, called by his biographer John Patrick Carswell a "rogue". He is best known for his collection of tall tales, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen also known as Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, originally a satirical work with political aims.

Wiki has the low-down on Rudolf's various business ventures

He had become known as a versatile scholar and a student of natural history and antiquities, and he published some original poems and also translations of Ossian's poems. In 1765 he published the first collection of Leibniz's philosophical works. He also wrote a treatise on Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

In 1767, he was appointed professor in Cassel, and subsequently librarian. He contributed in 1769 a zoological paper to the 59th volume of the Philosophical Transactions, which led to his being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and he wrote voluminously on all sorts of subjects. In 1774, he started a periodical called the Cassel Spectator. From 1767, he was responsible for some collections of Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel). He had to flee to England in 1775 after having gone to Italy in 1775 to buy curios for the Landgrave. He was found to have sold the Landgrave's valuables for his own profit. He was ejected from the Royal Society that same year for his "divers frauds and gross breaches of trust".

Even though Raspe was given work translating German books into English he was professionally and financially non grata

But Raspe remained poor, and the Royal Society expunged his name from its list.

Or not. What about the Cornish connection?

From 1782 to 1788, he was employed by Matthew Boulton as assay-master and storekeeper in the Dolcoath mine in Cornwall. At the same time, he also authored books in geology and the history of art.

The Trewhiddle Ingot, found in 2003, is a lump of tungsten found at Trewhiddle Farm and thought to be at least a 150 years old. This may predate the earliest known smelting of the metal (which requires extremely high temperatures) and has led to speculation that it may have been produced during a visit by Raspe to Happy-Union mine (at nearby Pentewan) in the late eighteenth century.

Raspe was also a chemist with a particular interest in tungsten. Memories of his ingenuity remained to the middle of the 19th century. While in Cornwall, he seems to have written the original version of Munchausen; whether he also wrote the several continuations that appeared until 1792 is still debated.

It's beginning to sound like Trewhiddle is synonymous with fraud. Historians may be more cautious about constantly alluding to the 'Trewhiddle style'.
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Mick Harper
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I don't know why. Aren't the vast majority of their most prized objects from everywhere and everywhen 'in the Trewhiddle style'?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
I don't know why. Aren't the vast majority of their most prized objects from everywhere and everywhen 'in the Trewhiddle style'?


It's a bit of a curiosity that in some arts (fine metalworking) the Anglo Saxons were far in advance of the Normans, yet these skills were swept away as the Dark Age descended. No, hang on, the Anglo Saxons were the Dark Age, I remember that bit from school.

Ok, the Anglo Saxons were great metalworkers, including Trewhiddle brooches, but crap at producing ploughs......Clearly they wanted to be thin and fashionable. That's it.

Can I have my homework back.
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Mick Harper
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I meant as in 'fake' but what you say is interesting. One of the earliest shocks I got in Anglo-Saxon studies was the news that pottery had ceased to be made in England during the early Anglo-Saxon period. I wondered just how backward a people had to be to forget what Neolithic humans had mastered but thought little about it at the time. (I'm sure this lacuna has been either addressed or carefully ignored since, it was a long time ago.)

But now, since it would seem there's a fair chance that all Anglo-Saxon material before (say) 950 AD is fake (or misattributed Roman), there's also a fair chance that Anglo-Saxon styles will reflect (with brute rusticity added for effect) the age in which they were faked. Hence the startlingly Victorian aspects of much of it. Or, if you prefer, the startlingly Anglo-Saxon aspects of the Gothic Revival and other arty Victorian enthusiasms.

Since there was at that time a strong pro-Anglo-Saxon (German and British) preference over Norman (French and Romish), it is not surprising they would be 'better'. Though since the Victorians were great improvers as well as gross sentimentarians, doubtless this would not extend to ploughshares. If only the dog had eaten their handiwork.
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Hatty
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Roman Scotland on Twitter wrote:
Only 2 pieces of archaeological evidence confirm Agricola existed- a lead pipe from Chester, inscribed "This lead pipe was made when Vespasian and Titus were Consuls … and when Gnaeus Julius Agricola was Governor of Britain"

The only written record for Agricola is via the notoriously unreliable Tacitus whose two works 'only survive in two manuscripts' and for which no provenance is forthcoming. Christ Church Oxford has an undated, unsigned manuscript (year of production assumed to be 1456) of Virgil's 'Eclogues and Georgics' set in the time of Agricola. So this inscription is a great find but why or how write a message on a piece of lead piping?

The why? isn't answered but the how? has been recently worked out. Roman inscriptions on lead pipes weren't done with movable type printing as claimed by nineteenth century scholars but are now believed to have been done with text stamps

The technology of creating these inscriptions was only recently understood. "A recent investigation by the typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle, however, concludes that all material evidence points to the use of common text stamps.

"A stamp (punch) which has the text carved in high-relief and in right reading is pressed into the slightly moist sand or clay of the mould, thus producing a reverse image of the text (matrix) in bas-relief. After the molten lead is poured out in the mould, the inscription appears raised in high-relief on the surface of the lead pipe. This is today considered the most plausible hypothesis for the creation of such inscriptions (full text stamp).

The inscribed lead pipe was 'partly' discovered during an excavation in Chester in 1939 but was only fully discovered in 1969.



The building being excavated is called the 'Elliptical Building' as its function is unknown, having been abandoned before completion. Not a monument to Agricola presumably.

The inscription, according to the Honorary Secretary of the Chester Archaeological Society, is unique in Britain

The fragmentary slate-cut inscription found near to the Elliptical Building in the late 1960`s (Britannia II (1971), 290 No. 7), the only example of its class from Britain, might also be connected with the postulated unusual status of Deva .
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Mick Harper
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If I were Vespasian and Titus I would have reservations about being commemorated on ducts generally. Coins, yes; public monuments, yes; even facing bricks in the Colosseum, but lead piping? That's more Gnaeus Agricola in the balineum. Mind you, it's a godsend for Roman CSI. Leaves a mark on the forehead.
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