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Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard

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Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard Contextualising Metal-Detected Discoveries: Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard (Project 5892) Revised Project Design Version 3 Submitted 18th July 2013 H.E.M. Cool Barbican Research Associates (Company no. 3929951; VAT registration 747960390) Document Control Grid Title: Contextualising Metal-Detected Discoveries: Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard Author: H.E.M. Cool. Start Date: 18th July, 2013 Contributors: Team members as per section 15 and Programme Co-ordinator. History: Developed from Draft second revision Project Design (June 2013), to incorporate the extended work on the materials analysis (Variation 3). Version number: 6 Status: Final Summary of changes: See Preface April 2013, June 2013 and July 2013 following the preliminaries. Circulation: English Heritage, HMG and Programme Co-ordinator Required Action: none File name: Staffordshire/Admin/Revised PD July 2013 Approval: H.E.M. Cool on behalf of Barbican Research Associates Ltd. 18: 06:2013 Contact details: 16 Lady Bay Road, West Bridgford NOTTINGHAM NG2 5BJ Tel: 0115 9819 065 Mobile: 00 44 7980 898962 [email protected] Contents Preface iv Preface April 2013 v Preface June 2013 v Preface July 2013 vi 1 Project Name 1 2 Summary Description 1 3 Background 3.1 Introduction 1 3.2 Organisation of this document 3 4 Assessment 4.1 Introduction 3 4.2 The Assessment tasks 6 4.3 Checking the records 7 4.4 Database and secure website planning 8 4.5 Aerial photography and fieldwork assessment 10 4.6 Background information on the area 14 5 The Hoard 5.1 Introduction 15 5.2 The contents and quantities 16 5.3 Scientific analysis 20 5.4 The date of the Hoard 22 6 The Potential of the Hoard to aid knowledge 6.1 Introduction 23 6.2 The Hoard as an artefact - exploring depositional practices 23 6.3 The Hoard as art – re-writing decoration 25 6.4 The Hoard as history – the origins of Mercia 26 6.5 The Hoard as economy – the gold standard 27 6.6 The hoard as worth – value then and now 28 7 Research aims and objectives 7.1 Introduction 29 7.2 What does the hoard consist of? 30 7.3 When was it deposited? 30 7.4 Why was it deposited? 30 7.5 What does it tell us about seventh century life? 30 7.6 What can we learn from the experience 31 7.7 Progress made by the end of Part 1 of the project 31 8 Business case 31 9 Project scope 32 10 Interfaces 33 11 Communication 11.1 Introduction 34 11.2 The secure website 34 11.3 The newsletter 34 11.4 Project team meetings 35 11.5 Communication with the Executive 35 11.6 Communication with the public 35 11.7 Highlight reports 35 i 12 Project review 12.1 Introduction 35 12.2 Review timetable 36 13 Health and safety 36 14 Project team structure 14.1 Project Executive 36 14.2 The project team 37 15 Methodology 15.1 Introduction 40 15.2 Background information 40 15.3 Stratigraphic narrative 40 15.4 Development and maintenance of database and website 41 15.5 Conservation 46 15.6 X-radiography 48 15.7 Work on the impressed foils 51 15.8 Materials analysis 51 15.9 Cataloguing, typology and research 55 15.10 Statistical Analysis 61 15.11 Background studies 62 15.12 Legacy 63 15.13 Final report – editing 64 15.14 Project management 65 15.15 Grouping exercise 66 16 Stages, products and tasks 66 17 Ownership 80 18 The Budget 80 19 Bibliography 84 20 Acknowledgements 89 Figures 3.1 Location Plan of the Staffordshire Hoard 2 4.1 A comparison of the Hoxne and Staffordshire Hoards 5 4.2 Hoard database entity relationship diagram 9 4.3 Results of the air mapping 11 4.4 Vertical air photograph showing the curvilinear cropmark 13 5.1 The gold items analysed in Table 5.5 21 5.2 Ternary diagram illustrating the data in Table 5.7 22 6.1 Sixth and seventh century gold and silver finds 27 15.1 Examples of the proposed illustration formats 59 15.2 Example of the proposed scaled photograph format 60 16.1 The tasks from March 2012-March 2013 77 16.2 The tasks from April 2013-March 2014 78 16.3 The tasks from April 2014-May 2014 79 Tables 4.1 Summary of when and how the items were found 8 5.1 Hoard contents quantified by database entry 16 ii 5.2 Hoard contents quantified by weight 17 5.3 Sword or seax elements present 18 5.4 Weights of gold and silver items 19 5.5 Sword or seax hilt plates by decoration 19 5.6 Sword or seax pommel caps by decoration 20 5.7 Metal composition of six gold items analysed by PIXE 21 16.1 Summary table of tasks and costs 68 16.2 Detailed summary of task, timetable and costs 70 Appendices 1 Extracts from the Assessment project design 89 2 Specification of the Database – Bryan Alvey 95 3 Assessment of the Aerial Photographs – Alisan Deegan 117 4 Organisational Chart of the Hoard Programme – Keith Bloor 134 5. Protocols relating to Handling and Security 137 6 Publication outline 140 7 Product descriptions 142 8 Risk log 150 iii Preface – March 2012 The document that follows provides a programme of work that will lead eventually to a timely publication of the Staffordshire Hoard. Initially a project design was submitted in December 2011 that costed and programmed the full project which would have run from March 2012 to the summer of 2015. Unfortunately this would have cost nearly two-thirds of a million pounds. Such a sum in these time of austerity is currently beyond the combined resources of English Heritage and the Owners of the Hoard. The project was always designed to run in two stages with the first stage aiming to provide a secure foundation on which to base the more extensive research of the second stage, and to allow an interim publication of an illustrated catalogue via the internet as an aid to fellow researchers and everyone interested in the Hoard. After discussions between English Heritage and the Owners it was decided to formalise this staged approach. Barbican Research Associates was asked to revise and cost a first stage which will allow choices to be made about what can be achieved in the second stage within whatever budget is then available. This document provides that. We believe it will provide secure foundations not only for the second stage, but will also provide much data for people wishing to use the evidence of the Hoard to explore the seventh century. There will be a robust research archive that will allow research to move forward without the need for repeated handling these fragile and often tiny fragments. Some aspects of the work will go far beyond laying the foundations. We have chosen at this point to concentrate a considerable amount of the available budget on analytical work that will be carried out at the British Museum. The Department of Conservation and Scientific Research is uniquely qualified to contribute to the scientific work on the Hoard because of the expertise within it, the range of analytical techniques that can be carried out there and the long standing experience with contemporary finds from Sutton Hoo and other places. Due to re-developments at the British Museum, the department would not be available to carry out this work in 2014. Despite the very heavy workload of the staff there, they have most generously agreed to undertake an ambitious programme of work over the 2012/2013 period that will be core to any future research. As a result of concentrating the available resources on the scientific and conservation aspects of the research during the first stage, the advanced studies of typological, art historical and other aspects of the Hoard will be reserved for the second stage. We believe it is important that the project be judged as a whole over both stages and so this project design describes all the work we wish to carry out. This first stage will provide the key to help us unlock the riches that will come from the second stage, and it will allow us to prioritise the aspects which have the most promise. Many parts of the document thus remain relatively unchanged from the December 2011 document. There have been only minor changes to section 1-14 with the following exceptions. There is a new sub-section (7.7) that assesses the progress towards achieving the research aims by the end of this first stage of the research. There are changes in sections 11 and 12 which reflect timetabling issues of this iv shorter project. The major changes start in section 15 (methodology) where it is explained whether the different aspects of the work will be carried out in this first stage or the second. Section 16 now outlines only the products and tasks to be carried out during the first stage and the budget (section 18) has been completely re-worked. Sections 17, 19 and 20 are unchanged. Appendices 1-6 are unchanged but the Product Descriptions and the Risk Log (Appendices 7 and 8), now relate only to the first stage. Preface – April 2013 In January 2013 the Hoard Management Group and English Heritage decided that a revised project design would be appropriate. Various organisational changes had been put in place in the wider Hoard programme, and it was felt needed to be reflected in the design as they impinged upon the workings of the Research project.
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