Over the Holidays I've been able to take advantage of the TiVo so that I could record obscure history documentaries that come on at odd hours in the day. The best shows tend to be on when no one is watching because the crapy shows that get high ratings, like Ice Road Truckers, come on in prime-time. I don't understand how modern day truckers in Alaska have anything to do with History. Furthermore, I don't understand why people who like history would like this show. Other documentaries are completely absurd and barely based in any fact, such as the UFO documentaries. Anyhow, there are the random History documentaries here and there that are descent. For instance, How the States Got Their Shape was really cool, especially when it explained why states like Kansas and Nebraska were shaped like rectangles or how Michigan got the Upper Peninsula instead of Toledo. I'm also a huge fan of How the Earth Was Made and Cities of the Underworld. All of these shows have been good to watch while I rummaged through internet job postings.
There was one documentary that got my attention more than others, Lost Gold of the Dark Ages on the National Geographic Channel. In September 2009, an English amateur metal detector enthusiast in Staffordshire found a massive gold hoard buried in a farm field that had been plowed over and over for hundreds of years. The artifacts date to around 700 AD and are Anglo-Saxon in origin. There were over 1,500 pieces of gold which weighed 5 kilograms (11 pounds). There was another 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) of silver pieces. The total value of the find was over $5 million (USD). Most of the pieces were fragments of Christian artifacts that had been broken and mangled. Many items that had decorated swords, helmets, and other war equipment. However, the iron from the swords and other equipment was missing. Because the pieces had been warped and mangled, it appeared that someone had ripped the gold from the useful parts of military equipment so that they could reuse the weapons and armor.
Mangled pectoral cross from the gold hoard.
These types of crosses hung around the necks
and on the chests of bishops, abbots, and priests.
Scabbard stud used to tie the sword onto the soldier.
Each of the red pieces of the glass was individually
and expertly cut and laid into place so that each piece of
glass was an original. This demonstrates great skill.
Cloisonne strip that may have come from a book, saddle,
altar, or shield. The documentary suggested that it
could have been the extravagant binding for a decorated
Bible with elaborate images that are now lost.
Small sample of the pieces found.
Since the gold hoard has only recently been excavated, there are still many things that historians do not know about these items. For instance, no one is sure who buried the gold or why. It is easy to assume that the pieces had originated from military hardware Christians lost in battle. It is very likely that clergymen carried Christian items like crosses into battle the same way an army might carry a flag. Perhaps these Christian soldiers had fought against pagan raiding party. But why tear the gold off the iron and steel and bury it all?
The documentary gave a couple theories. First, the gold was a trophy hoard that an army had buried and then couldn't find; there may have been other bags of gold buried elsewhere that the army did find again. Second, someone stole the gold and buried it in a field to find it later but never returned. Third, the gold hoard could have been part of a forgotten pagan ritual we no longer know anything about.
Personally, I don't like the theory that it was part of a forgotten pagan ritual. It seems rather impractical to bury such a large amount of gold, even for religious reasons. Surely the pagans would have buried a much smaller amount of gold and kept the rest, especially if they were warring against Christian neighbors and could use the funds. I have my own theory about where the gold came from and why it was buried. If the gold does come from the spoils pagans gained from Christians in battle, then the pagan victors may not have been safe yet. They took the most militaristic parts of their spoils in order to use them immediately for protection against a counter attack. Just in case they would have to retreat after a counter attack, they buried the most valuable pieces together so that the Christian army would not be able to regain the hoard. Since we have found this hoard, we could assume that either the Christians won their counter attack and forced the pagans to move away from the hoard or that the pagans had to retreat for another reason. If the pagans had not been in trouble, they would not have buried the gold; they would have taken it home and used it for their own purposes. Also, the fact that the iron and steel is missing might suggest that these items, which would normally be less valuable than gold and silver, were more valuable to the pagans; hence, I think they were still under threat of a counter attack.
Of course, all of this is conjecture, but that's what I liked so much about this documentary. The viewer could think for himself or herself about what happened to the gold 1,300 years ago.
Re-enactors for the National Geographic documentary
demonstrate how the Anglo-Saxon raid would have appeared.
A re-enactor wears a costume based upon what
historians believe the gold pieces tell us about
the armor and weapons the Anglo-Saxon warriors used.
The Anglo-Saxon gold hoard is so massive that historians will not use what we know about this period of history to tell them about these pieces of gold. Instead, the historians will take what they learn from the artifacts to tell them about Anglo-Saxon history.
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