Showing posts with label Staffordshire Hoard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Staffordshire Hoard. Show all posts
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Anglo-Saxon Portraits on Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 will be broadcasting a series of 'Anglo-Saxon Portraits' in their 'Essay' slot, over thirty programmes (3 sets of ten 15-minute episodes) beginning on Monday 15th October at 10.45pm and continuing into 2013. The first essay, on Vortigern, is by Barry Cunliffe. Further information about the series here. Future programmes are set to cover Augustine of Canterbury (presented by the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams) and King Raedwald (presented by Martin Carver), amongst many other topics. And the episodes should be available from the Radio 3 website via the 'listen again' function.
Friday, 22 October 2010
Festival of Ideas - Saturday 23rd October
Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:
Tomorrow the ASNC Department will be holding an 'Anglo-Saxon Treasure' afternoon, as part of Cambridge University's Festival of Ideas. From 1.30pm until 5pm, the Department will open its doors (on the 2nd floor of the English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge) for an afternoon of fun, ideas and activities. Young children will be able to colour in 'Anglo-Saxon brooches', and make rune-sticks, and for the grown-ups there will be a talk from Prof. Simon Keynes on the Staffordshire Hoard, Dr Richard Dance will be performing excerpts from the Battle of Maldon in Old English, and Dr Rory Naismith will be speaking about Anglo-Saxon coins. Dr Debby Banham will also be on hand to help visitors concoct some Anglo-Saxon herbal remedies. We look forward to seeing you there.
Tomorrow the ASNC Department will be holding an 'Anglo-Saxon Treasure' afternoon, as part of Cambridge University's Festival of Ideas. From 1.30pm until 5pm, the Department will open its doors (on the 2nd floor of the English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge) for an afternoon of fun, ideas and activities. Young children will be able to colour in 'Anglo-Saxon brooches', and make rune-sticks, and for the grown-ups there will be a talk from Prof. Simon Keynes on the Staffordshire Hoard, Dr Richard Dance will be performing excerpts from the Battle of Maldon in Old English, and Dr Rory Naismith will be speaking about Anglo-Saxon coins. Dr Debby Banham will also be on hand to help visitors concoct some Anglo-Saxon herbal remedies. We look forward to seeing you there.
Prof. Simon Keynes will be giving his expert assessment of the Staffordshire Hoard (pictured)
Monday, 12 April 2010
Note: Staffordshire Hoard documentary
A documentary about the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard will be broadcast this evening at 9pm on Channel 4.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Update: Staffordshire Hoard Saved for the Nation
Dr Rory Naismith writes:
On 23 March the National Heritage Memorial Fund pledged the final £1.285 million needed to reach the purchase price of £3.3 million set by a Treasure Valuation Committee in November 2009 for the Staffordshire hoard of 1,600 early Anglo-Saxon gold and silver objects. This news comes three weeks ahead of the scheduled deadline for the fundraising campaign. Donations contributing towards this goal have come from a range of sources, including the Art Fund, Birmingham and Stoke city councils and a successful public appeal, one anonymous donor to which gave £50,000.
Despite this important and extremely welcome step, fundraising efforts are set to continue, aiming now for the estimated £1.7 million needed by the hoard's future custodians (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and Stoke Museums) to undertake proper conservation, study and display to the public. Purchase of the hoard for the nation thus hardly marks the end of the interest and activity which it has generated: its acquisition paves the way for detailed investigation and long-term exhibition to begin in earnest.
On 23 March the National Heritage Memorial Fund pledged the final £1.285 million needed to reach the purchase price of £3.3 million set by a Treasure Valuation Committee in November 2009 for the Staffordshire hoard of 1,600 early Anglo-Saxon gold and silver objects. This news comes three weeks ahead of the scheduled deadline for the fundraising campaign. Donations contributing towards this goal have come from a range of sources, including the Art Fund, Birmingham and Stoke city councils and a successful public appeal, one anonymous donor to which gave £50,000.
Despite this important and extremely welcome step, fundraising efforts are set to continue, aiming now for the estimated £1.7 million needed by the hoard's future custodians (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and Stoke Museums) to undertake proper conservation, study and display to the public. Purchase of the hoard for the nation thus hardly marks the end of the interest and activity which it has generated: its acquisition paves the way for detailed investigation and long-term exhibition to begin in earnest.
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Staffordshire Hoard update
ELB writes:
The ASNC department's very own Prof. Simon Keynes was among the experts invited to view and discuss the Staffordshire Hoard as part of the fundraising campaign, led by the The Art Fund, to raise the money necessary to keep the Hoard in the country. Tony Robinson has an article in today's Sunday Times which discusses it further. Meanwhile, Richard Brooks, in the same newspaper's 'Culture' supplement hints that the National Heritage Memorial Fund may shortly be able to provide around £1.5 million pounds towards the cost of purchasing the Hoard, which could be added to the £1.6 million already raised to date. We await further news.
The ASNC department's very own Prof. Simon Keynes was among the experts invited to view and discuss the Staffordshire Hoard as part of the fundraising campaign, led by the The Art Fund, to raise the money necessary to keep the Hoard in the country. Tony Robinson has an article in today's Sunday Times which discusses it further. Meanwhile, Richard Brooks, in the same newspaper's 'Culture' supplement hints that the National Heritage Memorial Fund may shortly be able to provide around £1.5 million pounds towards the cost of purchasing the Hoard, which could be added to the £1.6 million already raised to date. We await further news.
Monday, 18 January 2010
The Staffordshire Hoard
Prof. Simon Keynes writes:
'The Staffordshire Hoard (or perhaps more accurately the 'Hammerwich Hoard', after the place where it was found) is certainly a very significant discovery, and represents a most welcome addition to our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon material culture in the seventh century. It includes a large quantity of gold fittings removed from swords and associated military equipment, such as sword pommels and scabbard bosses, and on the face of it looks like the most obviously valuable parts of war-gear captured from a defeated army. Yet most interestingly, it also includes a golden cross, which had been crumpled up in order to make it fit into a container of some kind, and also a folded strip of gold (perhaps removed from a wooden cross) bearing a rather crudely written Latin inscription calling for God's aid against His enemies.
The interpretation of this extraordinary find will depend in part on its composition, and in part on whatever can be established about its date, whether from analysis of the gold, or from the script on the gold strip; but it is difficult to resist the supposition that it represents loot taken from an East Anglian army sometime in the second or third quarter of the seventh century, and brought back through the east midlands and along Watling Street into the heartland of the kingdom of the Mercians (the vicinity of Tamworth and Lichfield, Staffordshire). The hoard thus substantiates what we knew or could suspect about the power, wealth and predatory activities of the Mercians in the seventh century, most famously during the reign of Penda (c.632-655); and it gives us something, from Mercia, to set alongside the rich inhumation cemeteries of Kent, or the burial mound at Taplow (Buckinghamshire), or the royal burial ground at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), or the complex of buildings at Yeavering (Northumbria), or the more recently-discovered chamber grave from Prittlewell (Essex). In his Ecclesiastical History, written in 731, Bede provided the context for our understanding of all these sites, with his tales of the English kings and kingdoms in the seventh century; and as more is discovered, the larger picture comes into sharper focus.'
An appeal is now underway to raise the necessary funds for the entire hoard to be kept in the West Midlands, where it was found. Prof. David Starkey launched the appeal, describing the hoard as 'gangland bling'.
'The Staffordshire Hoard (or perhaps more accurately the 'Hammerwich Hoard', after the place where it was found) is certainly a very significant discovery, and represents a most welcome addition to our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon material culture in the seventh century. It includes a large quantity of gold fittings removed from swords and associated military equipment, such as sword pommels and scabbard bosses, and on the face of it looks like the most obviously valuable parts of war-gear captured from a defeated army. Yet most interestingly, it also includes a golden cross, which had been crumpled up in order to make it fit into a container of some kind, and also a folded strip of gold (perhaps removed from a wooden cross) bearing a rather crudely written Latin inscription calling for God's aid against His enemies.
The interpretation of this extraordinary find will depend in part on its composition, and in part on whatever can be established about its date, whether from analysis of the gold, or from the script on the gold strip; but it is difficult to resist the supposition that it represents loot taken from an East Anglian army sometime in the second or third quarter of the seventh century, and brought back through the east midlands and along Watling Street into the heartland of the kingdom of the Mercians (the vicinity of Tamworth and Lichfield, Staffordshire). The hoard thus substantiates what we knew or could suspect about the power, wealth and predatory activities of the Mercians in the seventh century, most famously during the reign of Penda (c.632-655); and it gives us something, from Mercia, to set alongside the rich inhumation cemeteries of Kent, or the burial mound at Taplow (Buckinghamshire), or the royal burial ground at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), or the complex of buildings at Yeavering (Northumbria), or the more recently-discovered chamber grave from Prittlewell (Essex). In his Ecclesiastical History, written in 731, Bede provided the context for our understanding of all these sites, with his tales of the English kings and kingdoms in the seventh century; and as more is discovered, the larger picture comes into sharper focus.'
An appeal is now underway to raise the necessary funds for the entire hoard to be kept in the West Midlands, where it was found. Prof. David Starkey launched the appeal, describing the hoard as 'gangland bling'.
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