Historical Discussion

It will be thread for all historical discussions about this period, to avoid mess in other topics. I will post here my theories (I'm doing some research about etymology of Sub-Roman Britain words) and you can also post your random questions/thoughts and anything you want.

I'll update this post later.

http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/

You may have seen about this last week. A huge hoard of gold dating from the Anglo-Saxon period has been discovered in Staffordshire. The find is larger even than that of Sutton Hoo, and has got enthuasiasts rather excited. Unfortunately, it was found by an amateur metal detector loon, and not experts, and as I understand it he may have damaged some of the historical significance in his eagerness to unearth his loot (which has been declared a coroner's find, incidentally). But nonetheless, this is an amazing find, with over 1500 artefacts, including 5kg of gold and 1.3kg of silver, pommel caps, helmet fragments, and much more.

The cache of gold and silver pieces was discovered in what was once Mercia, one of five main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and is thought to date to between 675 and 725.

What do you think about it?

Cool, thats alot of artifacts.

Very interesting find guys  BTW, can somebody tell me why Britons have weapons very similiar to Romans? I thought that they had more Celtic than Roman influenced arms.

This mod is set in the 6th century, so the "Britons" are the people who lived in the Roman province of Britain, and had been Roman citizens for a few hundred years, so their troops look like a bit of a mish mash of native styles and late Roman military gear.

About the Staffordshire hoard, though more research is current being done, here is one of the first interesting things:


(Staffordshire) Anglo-Saxon hoard


(Wijnaldum/Winaam) Frisian fibula (brooch)

I used red arrows to point at the similar gold inlayed jewelry. Meaning that perhaps some of the artefacts found in the Staffordshire hoard might be from the hand of the same smith who made the Frisian fibula found at the 'terp' of Winaam (Friesland, Netherlands). The hoard is from the 7th century and the fibula is from the early 7th century.

The Winaam fibula was one of the keypieces in the 'Kings of the North Sea' exposition during the early 21th century. The name North Sea culture is used for the archaeological culture of the Germanic lands surrounding the Northsea from the 5th till the 8th century. In the 8th century the culture got divided between a Christian southern part: Anglo-Saxon lands, Frisia, Saxony (From then resp. Early Christian English period and for the mainland the Carolingian period) and a pagan Northern part: Denmark, Norse lands (from then known as Viking culture).