Tuesday 26 October 2010

Staffordshire Hoard Findspot Correctly identified in Warsaw

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According to the publication (brought to my attention by David Gill) of a paper on the Staffordshire Hoard in Antiquaries Journal (Dean, S., D. Hooke, and A. Jones. 2010. "The 'Staffordshire Hoard': the fieldwork." Antiquaries Journal 90: 139-52), it seems that my deduction of the "secret" of the findspot's location was almost spot on (although I said at the time "one of two fields", I later worked out which was the correct one, but I thought it was the other side of the field). So if I can work it out in remote Warsaw every nighthawk in the country had the opportunity to do the same and take their GPX5000s and get out there after dark. Actually I think there is every chance there was a royal vill in the valley below where Roman road crosses the stream 6 km from Lichfield and unless the team from Birmingham has investigated this properly the fragile traces of that too will be "hammered" into oblivion by our "mates" with the metal detectors before long. Apart from some scrabbling around in the immediate environs of the find itself, just what kind of followup to these hundreds of Treasure finds made each year is there? What kind of protection is extended to the places where nationally important treasures have been found to make sure they are not further damaged?

David Gill's "Looting Matters" has a Google Earth map flagging the site. In fact on GE you can see the parched spot where Birmingham archaeologists dug a hole in the photos. Obvious really.

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