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| Scrap metal, what is left of yet another inexpertly excavated Anglo-Saxon brooch (no scale). |
Mr Hardcastle, of York, North Yorkshire, said: 'I am disgusted and insulted by the offer,[...] Mr Hardcastle had put the jewellery up for sale on an antiquities website to test what bids he would get and they reached almost £50,000 ($64,000) before he pulled the sale. He says he is now going to fight to keep the jewellery rather than sell it for £2,800 ($3,500).Accordng to this report, Mr Hardcastle started to auction a Treasure find illegally. If that is true, I think for that he should forfeit the reward totally. The brooch itself is a poorly made example of the late seventh century, we have many more in museum collections of better quality, and better preserved. this one has been trashed by being dug up inexpertly, is lacking its backplate, pin and rim, and many of the filigree front plates (look at the shapes of the 14 remaining - there would have been probaly 20 originally). There would also have been a central element, probably a bigger boss. Also missing is any gold and garnet cellwork and the material filling the body of the object, the four bosses and cells. The item has very little to tell us about anything much - and this jerk wants the public to pay HIM £50,000 to get its own heritage back from this greedy grabber. In any case, the more things like this are dug up, the more the value of all the others drops. What is there to not understand?
Here is an example of the general type of thing (earlier, Kentish and with a flat face) to give an idea what is missing (still in the ground three feet down under this bloke's fence) - The Kingston Down brooch. Pay attention to the shapes of the filigree-decorated plates because they show what ds missing from the fence-post excavated one.
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| Kingston Down brooch |
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