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Grant
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You must go and see Can You Ever Forgive Me?
It's a very good comedy about forgery
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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There is an interesting disparity between Dark Age charters that mention land bought with gold, and the small number of actual gold finds. This does not really tally. Most Dark Age land should surely have been bought with silver?
Hats..?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I wouldn't have thought hats, no.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Sorry, I'm going stir crazy because I'm in the 'preparatory stage' of our new project (the bit that doesn't involve actual writing). Hattie does all the grunt work with peripatetic investigations and there are no pressing issues being pursued here, so I am reduced to making feeble jokes.
There's not much silver found either. That's the point about the 'early medieval era', there's not much of anything. We have not quite reached the stage of dubbing the Dark Age the No Age but it's getting closer and closer. In the immortal words of Captain Vered, "A little archaeology wouldn't come amiss."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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On the other hand, the biggest find of 'cash' of any kind is (I hope I'm right in saying) the Jersey hoard, and that comes from the Iron Age! But I'm not sure this is such a promising line of enquiry. If we consider securely historical times, how much gold/silver/anything have we found for the period 1500 - 2000 (A.D.) Brinks Mat? It appears people are careful with their money in all ages.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We may be bandits attacking a disappearing train. Two of our favourite targets seem anxious to move on from the historical artefacts business if their latest exhibitions are anything to go by
| Victoria & Albert EXHIBITION On now until Sunday, 14 July 2019 Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams |
Fair enough, they're meant to be all sorts but this might be of more concern to the traditionalists
| Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean 7 Feb – 9 June 2019 |
Even that very proper traditionalist Lucy Worsley (or at least her clothes hark back to an adolescence pitched somewhere at the Sloane Square end of the sixties) is going all contemporary
| She is curating an exhibition of The Favourite’s Oscar-nominated costumes at Kensington Palace and Hampton Court Palace |
though it is hard to tell from this whether they are the modern film costumes or the eighteenth century court ones they are based on and for which she is the nation’s custodian. Just as we are the nation's custodians more widely though we don't get quite so much exposure. None at all in fact. We're even failures as bandits. "What was all that shooting about back there?" "I didn't hear anything."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I am forty-five minutes into a History Channel two-hour prog called Hitler's Secret Tunnels (it could be a series). So the team are put onto the scent with a document outlining the McGuffin. Although it's acknowledged to be a photocopy from a dealer in Nazi stuff, they have it authenticated not with him (he is anonymous and looks to play no further part in the story) but by a friendly expert on a 'looks genuine to me' basis. By some means or other (I do flick through these things terribly) they stumble on to, indeed into, a disused Nazi tunnel.
Anyway, it's soon too dangerous to carry on so everyone (else) is sent back to base camp while our intrepid programme maker (and sidekick with camera) press on. Presently the detector thingy starts going mental because it's found the only thing in the tunnel, a silver cigarette case with two glass thingies in it ("I've never seen anything like them in my life") plus a rolled up thingy which does not attract comment but might come in handy later.
The team are soon breathlessly reunited and they rush off to a university bod who examines the glass thingies under an electron thingy but there's no need because, as it turns out, it's a crystal thingy for looking at six mysterious photos of houses imprinted at the end of the crystal thingy if you look at it the right way. That's as far as I've got because I'm going to need a bit of a lie down in case I have to rewrite my Unreliable History of the Second World War.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Grant wrote: | You must go and see Can You Ever Forgive Me?
It's a very good comedy about forgery |
Agreed, excellent.....I like the end credit showing that 2 of her letters got into a biography of Noel Coward. You couldn't make it up. Or rather you could, she certainly did.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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And five stars in the Guardian. Is it a zeitgeist thing? Are we running straight into a world agog for all things fakery? I fear not. Everybody loves things being exposed, experts confounded etc but only when it's safe to do so. Noel Coward is a light and modern confection, our fakes carry whole religions (and states) on their backs and have stood the test of time. A thousand years in some cases. Still, like the rats we are, we can always nibble at the slender threads and hope for the worst.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Super Bowl safely over (our prayers were heard), I can get back to Hitler's Secret Tunnels. The houses in the crystal maze are quickly identified as being on the Czech/Polish/German border (I don't think for marketing reasons) so the team hie there. Not much happens for the next hour or so and things are beginning to pall when, dang me, he pulls the same stunt. Empty tunnel, no witnesses, detector whah wahs, finds tube thingy, rolled up thingy inside. "It looks like a genuine Luftwaffe map," says genuine Luftwaffe map expert. What does it show, please, damnit, what does it show? Small, discrete areas all over MittelEuropa marked in red hatching that "might well be more of Hitler's Secret Tunnels". I told you there could be a series in it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I report this not because it is serious, but because it is not. The History Channel started life as serious television, and still is to some extent. I often use it as a source because spending fifty minutes watching a documentary on a minor but useful subject is more efficient than spending three days reading a book on the same subject. That's how you become a polymath. But THC soon found there wasn't enough of us and started larding the schedules with more sensationalist fare.
However, there were strict rules. You could make a six-part series entitled Hunting Hitler or The Curse of Oak Island using all kinds of extravagant assumptions and any kind of fruitcake talking head, but you weren't allowed to fake things. It is the same genre as the various Ghosthunting programmes -- it could be silly, it could be boring, but it couldn't be downright dishonest. You're not allowed to dress one of the crew in a sheet.
Until Hitler's Secret Tunnels. At least in my experience. Clearly this is dishonest. The question(s) are "Has The History Channel colluded?" or "Does The History Channel know -- or care -- that it has been sold a pup?" The reason, in turn, for this being important to ourselves is that this is very similar to the position that museums find themselves in. Do they know, do they care, about the pups in their collections? We can, I hope, acquit them of actually seeking out the pups even if, as we have discovered, that is precisely what they did during their own formative years.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Does a find count as a hoard if objects are found 'in dribs and drabs'?
A collection of thin gold discs, the Binham Hoard, was found between 2004 and 2013, and labelled early Anglo-Saxon. There is more than one sign of bogusness just in the opening remarks
| ...found in a field in Binham (Norfolk). This find is unique in Anglo-Saxon England where bracteates have previously been found either in graves or as single finds. A further two gold bracteates and a possible die have been discovered in the vicinity of Binham suggesting a ‘bracteate cluster’. |
These discs were found in the same field.. Is it normal for metal-dectectorists and/or archaeologists to take nine years to locate 'a cluster'?
The British Library helpfully defines 'bracteates', a somewhat specialist word
| Bracteates are neck pendants which derive from the practice of wearing pierced Roman coins as jewellery. They developed in Scandinavia and northern Germany in the 5th century, copying Roman coin designs and inventing new motifs incorporating mythological imagery. |
So they're Roman presumably. Nothing remotely Anglo-Saxon has ever turned up in Binham but then they find a rune
| There is a short runic inscription, possibly reading waat or wææt, meaning ‘liquid’ or ‘drink’ in Old English. Only about twenty objects with runic inscriptions made before c. 650 are known from England. |
There is also some Roman lettering but perhaps that's to be expected with reused Roman coins?
| The other three bracteates, one neatly folded, depict a human head in profile, facing left. In front of the face is a serpent that splits into two. Roman lettering encircles the head. The largest of these bracteates is the biggest and heaviest yet found in Britain. |
The bracteates are unusual so they have to be put into some kind of context. An 'emerging elite' is the best bet even if said elite didn't have anywhere to live.
| This discovery shows that the practice of hoarding bracteates occurred in eastern England as it did in north Germany and southern Scandinavia. These bracteates often share identical or similar designs, which seems to relate to their use by an emerging elite who were in frequent communication around the North Sea and who shared similar ideological beliefs. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One for Wiley -- he's our bracteasaur -- but the general question of 'hoards' is an important one. Our general assumption is that
1) hoards are genuine (unless proved to be not so) simply because there are too many items for faking to be feasible, i.e profitable.
2) single finds are fake (unless proved to be not so, which is generally the case). This sounds paradoxical but so many are pouring in thanks to metal detectorists that circumspection must be the first order of the day.
Your serial hoard is a third category. I agree the circumstances are at the smellier end but on the other hand, what are the circumstances? If legit, the authorities were called in on day one, in 2004. If so, then the time lag is not overly-suspicious since setting up official digs is a tremendously long process and not necessarily pursued during every (short) digging season. But if we assume a more informal sequence of events then the rune sounds like a clear case case of 'salting' to establish/exploit the Anglo-Saxon (presumed mis-)attribution.
One hates to repeat their parrot cry, but more research is needed.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The report says the bracelets "appear to be of 6th-century date". It's not very scientific especially in view of the
| absence of any other Anglo-Saxon artefacts from the surrounding area, with the exception of the two bracelets, apparently of the same date, and a 9th-century object of uncertain function |
The first object found, in 2004, excited no-one and went unreported. It wasn't even gold
| The first fragments found were of copper-alloy and were not thought to relate to the hoard. The discovery of the gold example now suggests they do. |
The archaeologists had to sit up and take notes, one of the finds turned out to be "the largest and heaviest bracheate ever found in England".
What is striking is the 'S-shaped stamp' which archaeologists claim is typical of Scandinavian and north German motifs. Makes one think it's a Billy & Charly (the Shadwell forgers) situation
On the largest bracteate, four zones enclose the central motif. They were decorated alternately with a series of triangular and S-shaped stamps, the latter a well-known motif on Scandinavian and continental bracteates, clustering around the Baltic.
Only one other English example sports this motif, a fragment from the border zone of a bracteate also from Norfolk, probably Sporle-with-Palgrave
On the two smaller and very similar bracteates, the same stamps were most probably used to decorate two surrounding zones: the inner zone with the S-shaped stamp, and the outer one with two series of the triangular stamp set against each other. | |
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