Leslie Webster | Central Unit blogs

Conference programme

The provisional programme for our conference has been drafted and it is laid out below. I doubt anyone will want to turn up to listen to what I have to say! I’m personally looking forward to the Schadla-Hall talk as they are always worth listening to.

Conference tickets are available from Claire Costin (ccostin@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk) – £10 for 1 day, £15 for both (concessions available).

Tuesday 17th April

Chair – Sally Worrell

10.00: Welcome – Roger Bland
10.10: Dan Pett – “The Portable Antiquities Scheme’s database: its development for research since 1998″
10.35: Clive Bond – “The Portable Antiquities Scheme: the contribution of lithics and lithic scatters”
11.00: Coffee
11.30: Richard Bradley – “Bronze Age hoards: their contribution to landscape archaeology”
11.55: Mark Lodwick – “Searching for Context: Cauldrons, Feasting, Axes & Death in Later Prehistoric South Wales”
12.20: Duncan Garrow – “The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology? Iron Age Celtic Art, GIS analysis and the PAS”
12.45: Discussion
13.00: Lunch

Chair – JD Hill

14.00: Fraser Hunter – “Across the Divide: Iron Age Sty;es in Roman Britain”
14.25: Tom Brindle – “The Portable Antiquities Scheme and Roman Northamptonshire: Some Work in Progress”
14.50: Rob Collins – “Finds from the Roman Northern Frontier: Patterns from PAS Data”
15.20: Discussion
15.30: Tea
16.00: Sam Moorhead – “Extending the frontiers – how the PAS Roman coin database expands our knowledge of Roman coin use in England”
16.25: Jude Plouviez – “Counting Roman brooches”
16.50: Discussion

Wednesday 18th April

Chair – Leslie Webster

10.00: Welcome, fire exits etc
10.00: Mary Chester-Kadwell – “Patterns of Life and Death in the Early Anglo-Saxon Landscape of Norfolk”
10.25: Andrew Richardson and Laura McLean – “Early Anglo-Saxon Brooches in southern England: the contribution of the Portable Antiquities Scheme”
10.50: Martin Welch/Sue Harrington – “Beyond the Tribal Hidage: using portable antiquities to explore early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in southern England”
11.15: Discussion
11.20 Coffee
11.45: Martin Biddle – tbc
12.10: Tania Dickinson – “The changing face of saucer-brooch distribution, 1912 – 1977 – 1997 – 2007″
12.30: Gabor Thomas – “The Missing Dimension: the circulation and production of Carolingian-style metalwork in Anglo-Saxon England”
12.55: Discussion
13.00: Lunch

Chair – Helen Geake

14.10: Mark Blackburn and Rachel Atherton – “Torksey: finds from a Viking winter camp”
14.35: Geoff Egan – “Widespread Devotion: New Insights from the Portable Aniquities Scheme into Pilgrim Trinkets”
15.00: John Cherry – “tbc”
15.25: Discussion
15.30: Tea
16.00: Anne Boyle – “What’s The Point? The Value of Find-Spot Data to Studies of Material Culture.”
16.25: Tim Schadla-Hall – “tbc”
16.50: Discussion
17.00: Close

2005 T298, Medieval Runic Gold Fragment from Essex

corinne_mills/Treasure_act/
I’ve today come home from working away to find an email from Caroline Barton, Assistant Treasure Registrar at the British Museum part of which is as follows:

Just to inform you that Sonja Marzinzik has now completed her report on the fragment (with the aide of MS Leslie Webster) and as such I have passed the case to the coroner for her to hold the Treasure inquest. I’ve attached above a copy of the report; you’re copy of the letter to the coroner will arrive soon in the post but I thought I’d send you an copy via e-mail as your e-mail address was in the file.

The coroner should make contact with you concerning the inquest and once the coroner informs me of the inquest result I will then pass the case to the Department for Culture Media and Sport, who will deal with the case through the valuation process.

The report reads as follows

REPORT

Essex (2005 T298)
Finder: C. Mills
Date of discovery: 16/08/05 (reported to British Museum 13/09/05)
Circumstances of discovery: While searching with a metal-detector.

Object Date: Probably 9th century

Description: Runic gold fragment
An oblong, solid fragment of a larger object, roughly D-shaped in cross section and tapering in height towards one end. At the higher end, the fragment appears to have been chopped. The shorter end shows some damage and it seems that part of the underside has been cut away here.

The underside of the object is flat apart from a small dent and some minor ?cracks. The upper, curved, side is divided into two panels by a band running along the middle axis. It meets another band, that frames the lower edge of the object, at the narrower end.

The fragment is engraved on both sides with runes of the Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, or futhorc. Only three letters survive on each face: these may be transliterated respectively as (dots indicate where further letters are missing):
(a) …G D E
(b) T Æ A…

The runes are set in relief on a recessed background, which may originally have contained niello.

Discussion: It is not clear what object this very small and damaged fragment came from. Although the shape is superficially reminiscent of a seventh-century sword pommel, cut in half, such pommel fittings are hollow, not solid like this, and the fragment is also very small, and stylistically later in date.

It is not possible to make much sense from such truncated inscriptions, but two tentative interpretations may be offered. (a), which is probably the end of a word, from its form is likely to be the end of a verb in the third person, past tense. This could have thus been part of a formula, ‘X verb Y’, as in ‘X made’ or ‘owned Y’. (b) is probably the beginning of a word; D. Parsons, Institute for Name Studies, Nottingham University, has suggested that it might be a form of the Old English ‘teah’, meaning ‘tie’, ‘fastening’ or, secondarily, ‘box’, ‘case’, ‘casket’, ‘coffer’. It is possible but unprovable that this word might be the Y element, or part of it, in the formula suggested by the [unknown] verb on the other side. If the full inscription did follow such a formula, then it follows that an X element must have preceded the verb represented by its last three letters on side (a). This would have implications for the original scale of the object.

The small letters, cut in relief against a background possibly originally inlaid with niello, are typical of ninth-century Anglo-Saxon inscriptions, such as the Æthelwulf and ‘Lancashire’ rings and the piece is likely to date to that period. The fact that the fragment has been both struck and chopped up, perhaps for use as bullion, might suggest that this took place in a context of Viking activity in the later ninth or tenth century; xxxxxxx is on the edge of an area of Scandinavian settlement focussed on Colchester.

Scientific analysis has indicated a gold content of 91-93%, silver content of 5-7% and copper content of 1-2%. The small white specks on the back are osmium/iridium/ruthenium containing inclusions, indicating that the gold came from alluvial sources. An alluvial source for gold has been identified in at least one other ninth-century Anglo-Saxon object.

Dimensions: Maximum L 0.9cm; W 0.8cm; Maximum H 0.5 cm; Minimum H 0.2cm;m Weight 3.1 grams

Note: This find qualifies as Treasure under the Treasure Act of 1996 in that it is greater than 10% gold and more than 300 years old.

Leslie Webster
Keeper
Department of Prehistory and Europe
The British Museum

Sonja Marzinzik
Curator of Insular Early Medieval Collections
Department of Prehistory and Europe
The British Museum

An experience not to be missed 23rd September

A fragment of gold runic inscription

I’ve received a couple of interesting emails from Leslie Webster, who is the Keeper at the Department of Prehistory and Europe in The British Museum with some of her thoughts about the find.

Here is some of what she tells me:

David was in yesterday and confirmed that his reading agrees with the above. These are also definitely Anglo-Saxon runes; we think that G D E represents the end of a verb, and David therefore very sensibly suggests that as this looks very like the end of the object, that T AE A must be the beginning of another word. But he will get back to us with a definitive verdict on what all this might mean.

Neither of us are sure what object this scrap might come from yet, and that will need some further thought. But having looked closely at the style and scale of the inscription, which was almost certainly originally inlaid with niello,it fits very well with a series of gold finger rings with runic and non-runic inscriptions which are conventionally dated to the 9th century. This makes it rather more likely that this tiny piece of chopped gold, though Anglo-Saxon in origin, owes its present shape to Viking intervention, and is actually a piece of Viking ‘hack-gold’, bullion intended for remelt into ingots or for exchange.

I have shown it briefly to Professor James Graham-Campbell, who is the leading expert on Viking gold and silver hoards in England, and he will be back to examine it properly in a few days. In the meantime, David, who as well as being a runologist, is head of the English Place-Name Survey, has pointed out that the area around XXXXXXX is the only part of Essex which shows clear Viking influence in the place names. So – just possibly – there may be a Viking factor at work here?

Watch this space!

An experience not to be missed 26th August

Friday 26th August 2005

Another update from Caroline today:

Hi Co,

I have now had a response from Leslie Webster at the BM who has been away. She is deferring judgment until she sees the widget, but has passed details over to another expert at Nottingham University, so there are lots of people on the case now!

hope all is well with you,

regards

Caroline McDonald
Finds Liaison Officer, Essex

An experience not to be missed Thursday 18th August

Thursday 18th August

A number of people have been emailing me regarding my wee find.

Kevin Leahy, who is a Finds Adviser – Early Medieval metalwork, for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, is actually on holiday painting the fascias on his house (some holiday!) but has been following the discussions online and he has sent details of the runes to an expert in Germany to see what she makes of it.

I’ve also heard again this morning from Caroline, my FLO, that Barry Ager, the Viking specialist at the British Museum, was informed of the find the day she saw me. He has suggested to her that it was a job for the BM Anglo-Saxonist’s headed up by Leslie Webster.

Normally, to speed up the process Caroline would write the treasure reports for the British Museum, which are then used by the coroner at the inquest, but on this occasion she feels this is beyond her expertise and is requesting that the British Museum curator does the full report. She is now just waiting for the various expert opinions to come back and then will keep me posted.

Otherwise I now just have to wait for the Inquest to be scheduled – but this can only happen after the report is written and my wee find is with the British Museum which is likely to be in early September.