Abstract
The materials of the Staffordshire Hoard – garnets, gold, and even the soil that clings to the fragmented pieces of metalwork – have long histories in both time and place. An examination of this material ecology makes plain the co-presence of the past, the radical instability of things, and our own implication in the work of history; it also raises questions about what we leave out of romanticized art historical narratives, including histories of violence, both human and environmental. The history of the Hoard is a time of composition, decomposition, and recomposition; ultimately, the history of the Hoard is glimpsed only in pieces.
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Photo © Birmingham Museums Trust
Photo © Birmingham Museums Trust
Photo: Portable Antiquities Scheme, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
Photo: K. Overbey
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Notes
Few stones were widely written about in the early middle ages, but carbuncle was one that would have been well known (Kitson, 1978, 22–23 and 37).
For an image of a reconstructed sword hilt, see Castriota, Figure 2, in this volume.
On the synthesis of warrior and weapon, see Mittman and MacCormack in this volume.
He wrote a poem about that night: Hayes (2010).
See Castriota in this volume.
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Overbey, K.E. Passing time with the Staffordshire Hoard. Postmedieval 7, 378–387 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0009-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0009-z