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[trentsands]

A huge round of applause for Mr Terry Herbert, the metal detectorist and finder, who did the right and ethical thing of informing the Portable Antiquities Scheme staff.
Many a different person would have pawed it out of the ground and flogged it on eBay.

Well under English law he does get to sell it and keep the money, right? I think it is just that the museums get the first right to bid. Or is that wrong?

Nope, it's treasure trove, it belongs to the Crown. The Crown will pay a price determined by a valuation committee (which will be pretty much the market price) and then it can be sold on.

I'll also be very surprised if it isn't subject to an export restriction. The furthest from Staffordshire it'll be going will be Great Russell Street.

The news reports actually say what Kedves just said.  The profits for sale of the times are split between the finder and the owner of the property.

[present_mirth]

I showed the images to my Brit Lit students this morning.  One section was like, "yeah, whatever," but the students in the other section got very excited and wanted to know exactly where it was found, and whether the guy who found it would get rich, and whether it was in a box or case or just buried in the earth, and whether this meant Beowulf was real.  I like that section; they make me happy.

It's nice that the finder does get the money, after all -- I was under the impression that the government took all, so I'll have to correct that on Monday.

[wegie]

It's nice that the finder does get the money, after all -- I was under the impression that the government took all, so I'll have to correct that on Monday.

Originally, the Crown could take all the stuff and do whatever it wanted with it. In practice (and I think there may have been a change in the law as well), the finder gets the proceeds.

In theory, the finds can go to the open market. In practice, these pieces aren't leaving the UK. The finder and the farm owner will get a good price, but it won't be quite as much as if the Getty and the Met got into a bidding war.

[llanfair]

A huge round of applause for Mr Terry Herbert, the metal detectorist and finder, who did the right and ethical thing of informing the Portable Antiquities Scheme staff.
Many a different person would have pawed it out of the ground and flogged it on eBay.

Well under English law he does get to sell it and keep the money, right? I think it is just that the museums get the first right to bid. Or is that wrong?

Nope, it's treasure trove, it belongs to the Crown. The Crown will pay a price determined by a valuation committee (which will be pretty much the market price) and then it can be sold on.

I'll also be very surprised if it isn't subject to an export restriction. The furthest from Staffordshire it'll be going will be Great Russell Street.

Works for me.  If the British Museum gets it, I'll get to see it :)

[wegie]

The furthest from Staffordshire it'll be going will be Great Russell Street.

Works for me.  If the British Museum gets it, I'll get to see it :)

We can but hope that they display it better than they do the Sutton Hoo treasure. Last time I was there I wanted to take an axe to the whole display.

[llanfair]

The furthest from Staffordshire it'll be going will be Great Russell Street.

Works for me.  If the British Museum gets it, I'll get to see it :)

We can but hope that they display it better than they do the Sutton Hoo treasure. Last time I was there I wanted to take an axe to the whole display.

It was awfully stiff, wasn't it? The display setup, I mean.

[sad_goat]

If you loved that one, this one should make you smile too. Look at the shield, for example.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/Hundreds-of-Saxon-graves-unearthed-on-new-pub-site-newsinkent28172.aspx

[jacaranda_]

If you loved that one, this one should make you smile too. Look at the shield, for example.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/Hundreds-of-Saxon-graves-unearthed-on-new-pub-site-newsinkent28172.aspx

Holy mackerel:  TWO discoveries like this in a single summer?

[llanfair]

Unbelievable! It's a good year for the Anglo-Saxons and their scholars.

[teeban]

Ooo! The flickr album is gorgeous! I'm tickled pink by this find as well, just as a voyeur. What good luck! What gorgeous artifacts.

[t_r_b]

Unbelievable! It's a good year for the Anglo-Saxons and their scholars.

Somewhere, a long-dead Anglo-Saxon is muttering to himself, "so that's where I left it!"

[wegie]

Unbelievable! It's a good year for the Anglo-Saxons and their scholars.

I wouldn't go so far as to say unbelievable, mainly because it's impossible to move in England without hitting something medieval, Saxon or even earlier. The little part of Hampshire I'm from has: four or five known Saxon graveyards, three Iron Age ring-ditch systems (there's an even better one a few miles up the valley), a few barrows and tumuli, a couple of Roman farm/villa complexes (not very good ones), six Saxon villages/hamlets, and five churches that mainly date from before 1400 (including one that's late Saxon). And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head!

[galactic_hedgehog]

The furthest from Staffordshire it'll be going will be Great Russell Street.

Works for me.  If the British Museum gets it, I'll get to see it :)

We can but hope that they display it better than they do the Sutton Hoo treasure. Last time I was there I wanted to take an axe to the whole display.

It was awfully stiff, wasn't it? The display setup, I mean.

It's been a while (7?) years, but I don't remember Sutton Hoo being all that bad.  Maybe it was because of our tour guide.  We were visiting friends who live in the area and their son (I guess he was 10 or 11 at the time) took us around and showed us everything.  He loved the place was incredibly eager to show it off.

[jacaranda_]

Unbelievable! It's a good year for the Anglo-Saxons and their scholars.

I wouldn't go so far as to say unbelievable, mainly because it's impossible to move in England without hitting something medieval, Saxon or even earlier. The little part of Hampshire I'm from has: four or five known Saxon graveyards, three Iron Age ring-ditch systems (there's an even better one a few miles up the valley), a few barrows and tumuli, a couple of Roman farm/villa complexes (not very good ones), six Saxon villages/hamlets, and five churches that mainly date from before 1400 (including one that's late Saxon). And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head!

Well, this was my next question.  The Staffordshire find has clearly gotten more high-profile attention -- the NYT didn't bother to report the Kent graves.  So is it the quality and unusual nature of the artifacts discovered in Staffordshire that makes this find much more remarkable?  Both for the material value of the items and the cultural information that scholars will be able to derive from them?  It sounds like perhaps what was found in the Kent graves is, well, incredibly old, but also familiar stuff (beads, chain mail, swords).

Also, amusing note at the bottom of the article sad_goat posted:  apparently the chain mail and sword pictured are replicas.  Oops.

[wegie]

Unbelievable! It's a good year for the Anglo-Saxons and their scholars.

I wouldn't go so far as to say unbelievable, mainly because it's impossible to move in England without hitting something medieval, Saxon or even earlier. The little part of Hampshire I'm from has: four or five known Saxon graveyards, three Iron Age ring-ditch systems (there's an even better one a few miles up the valley), a few barrows and tumuli, a couple of Roman farm/villa complexes (not very good ones), six Saxon villages/hamlets, and five churches that mainly date from before 1400 (including one that's late Saxon). And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head!

Well, this was my next question.  The Staffordshire find has clearly gotten more high-profile attention -- the NYT didn't bother to report the Kent graves.  So is it the quality and unusual nature of the artifacts discovered in Staffordshire that makes this find much more remarkable?  Both for the material value of the items and the cultural information that scholars will be able to derive from them?  It sounds like perhaps what was found in the Kent graves is, well, incredibly old, but also familiar stuff (beads, chain mail, swords).

Yup. The point about the Staffordshire hoard is both the extremely good quality <drools again over the gripping beasts in garnet> and the sheer quantity of of it. Sutton Hoo, which is the richest burial ever found in Anglo-Saxon England, had about a kilo of gold in the burial, the King of Bling had a decent amount of gold, but the Staffordshire hoard has five kilos! It must have been worth an absolute fortune at the time that it was cached.

The other interesting point about the Staffordshire haord is that it isn't a burial (so far as has been reported). So, whilst it's obviously an assemblage with some specific ritual overtones (it's mainly from swords and helmets), it's not got the "let's show how great and powerful this man is to the gods" overtones that burial assemblages often posess. Also, because it's mainly one type of artifact, you then also have to think about what that means for the overall levels of wealth distribution within the society. If this person (whether it's Penda, one of the other Kings of Mercia, a house carl or whoever) can end up with a hoard of 80 gold pommel tops, somewhere out there are 80 warriors who could afford such decorations, which suddenly makes 7th/8th century CE England a *lot* wealthier place than it was last week.