Thursday, September 24, 2009

The New Staffordhshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard

BBC Report

It's a pretty fantastic day to be a medievalist here (70 years after Sutton Hoo). Byzantinists may be interested because this hoard included Byzantine objects. 5 kilograms of the objects were in gold.

Me and my dad discuss all sorts of things all the time, and he listend to me talking about medieval and Byzantine topics all the time, but today we spent 30 minutes
on the law of treasure trove, why there might be Byzantine gold work with Ceylonese jewels found a hundred miles from us (here in south Lancashire), and all because it was in the news.

This is wow wow wow.

See the Official Site

See FlickrPhotos

2 comments:

Quietzapple said...

Yes, it must be exciting for you.

I am making a theatre costume, notionally for a hedge witch, based on medieval dress using "The Medieval Tailor's Assistant" by the excellent Sarah Thursfield.

Was cotton used as a sewing medium among the poor, or was linen thread more common? Was cotton woven for clothing worn here 1400 say?

The rural poor would have worn dowdy colours, sage, browns, grey? With odd lines of brighter colours in the weaves?

Poxy V & A not exhibiting their medieval clothing collection til Dec they say.

Thanks for any advice.

Paul Halsall said...

Hmmm, Quitzapple, re-enaction is not really my think. I mean I know what real wool and linen look like, but all the other stuff have never been what I focus on.

The Medievil List [ MEDIEV-L List: http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/mediev-l/mediev-l.html ] has lots of people who can answer such questions.