Crosby Garrett helmet: What an odd state to be in

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In a comment to an earlier post here Barendina Smedley questions the state of the Crosby Garrett helmet when found, which prompts me to attempt to pull together in one place a couple of things that have perplexed me since I first saw the photos of the object.

The PAS record does not really contain much of a description of what was found/what was received by Christie's (i.e., the state of the object before it was prettified) [See also David Gill's typically penetrating questions on a related topic]. The record however states: " In this case of this helmet, the visor was found placed face downwards and the helmet had been folded prior to deposition". This really does not make any sense. What on earth does this mean, that the helmet was "folded" like a table napkin? Where are the "fold" marks on the metal sheet fragments in the photo that led to Ms Worrell making such an odd statement?

The photos on the PAS database are the only ones currently in the public domain showing the pre-reconstruction state of the object. It is not clear whether they show all the (reportedly 67) pieces brought to London. If anyone else has any other photos of the discovery "as found", they are not showing them.

What we see in these photos may be discussed in five main groups of finds (in the descriptions, "right", "left" etc unless otherwise specified refer to the person whose head was inside the helmet, not the view from outside):

1) The griffin. [Let us leave aside the question for the moment whether it really belongs where it has been stuck which I raised in an earlier post; for the purpose of this discussion, let's assume it does]. This is cast and was apparently soldered to a rounded surface. There are no photos of the underside of the base in the public domain. A question that needs answering is when, how and why it was detached from the helmet (which it apparently was by the time the finds reached London).

2) Large fragment comprising the almost complete back of the helmet body itself, repousee copper alloy sheet - apparently not tinned. The lower part is complete and undistorted, with chips out of the neckguard (these bits were not included in the reconstruction, they may still be in the ground at the findspot). The upper edge of the fragment at the back is broken off irregularly. The photos show clearly that this is not a cut or tear made in fresh metal, it is damage caused to metal already corroded and brittle. Note there is no bending of the damaged edges in the preserved fragment (see below). No photo has been made public of the concave surface of this piece, so we cannot see to what degree the rim of the object was preserved here, neither do we learn anything about lining attachment, fastening mechanisms or hinges.

3) The almost complete visor/face mask of the helmet, repousee copper alloy sheet, apparently tinned externally. We do not see the convex face in the (oblique) PAS photos, to judge what its rear edge looks like, perhaps it was substantially intact. In the photo there is a stress crack on the lower part of the (face's) right cheek. Note that fine details of the eyes were undamaged in the soil. The dent at the tip of the nose (and a less obvious one on the bridge of the nose and by the lips hinted at in several photos) may have been caused in use, or at the time of deposition. In the PAS photo there is an extensive area of some grey gunk on the chin. What is this? It does not look like a typical corrosion product, is this some kind of crude gapfilling (using car body filler for example?). Would this be filling a hole of a dent? This raises the question, just what treatment this object had received (and where and why) before it came to Christie's. Note this whole area has been painted over green in the Christie's reconstruction - leading us to suspect the extent to which the desirable "patina" we saw displayed in the auction room is green paint (see Barendina Smedley's musings on this).

That accounts for three pieces of the "33 fragments, with 34 smaller fragments found in association" reported by Ms Worrell. Most of the rest seem likely to be in group (4):

4) Several dozen joining fragments of at least twelve pieces of convex copper alloy sheet. The form of the fractures show that they occurred post-deposition in brittle, presumably corroded, metal. Perhaps due to some soil movement before or during discovery by the treasure hunters. They join to form two conjoining roughly triangular fragments of an object with a finished edge along the base of the triangle. The dimensions are not clear as there is no scale (!) in the photos.

Assuming that these fragments all came from the helmet, it can be surmised that the finished edge is the rim of the helmet body and since it seems likely that (although we do not see them in the photos) the left and right sides of the helmet's front opening are preserved on piece (2), this probably is the portion of the edge of the helmet running across the brow and temples which obviously is absent from this element. The general convex form of the piece of the helmet from which these fragments came can be seen from the photos, these fragments must be what later became in the reconstruction the front of the peak of the helmet above the forehead.

If this was conical (as reconstructed) the lack of scale in this photo makes it difficult (impossible) to say how much of the back part of the peak of the helmet is represented here. Needless to say, by the time the helmet has been reconstructed and the differences between original bits and gapfilling of unknown material have been obscured by liberal use of green paint, even a close scrutiny of the published photos of the reconstruction cannot identify the contours of the individual fragments shown to determine how they were placed in the reconstruction. This of course goes against the ethics of archaeological conservation. It seems likely that fragments from a substantial part of the back of the helmet was absent from the pieces brought to London.

The fragments of the Crosby Garrett helmet as seen by the PAS in May (?) 2010. Photo PAS.

To come back to the bits pictured lying on the table, there are two odd features about this reassembled group of pieces. On the left of the picture (just above the little polybag with the small bits) although the photo is not clear, there may be a sharp-edged raised ridge, as though the metal has buckled in the past. There is no such doubt about what we see on the right of the photo, just above the detached griffin. Here the metal is curved under quite strongly. This curved plane does not appear on the reconstructed helmet (it would be at the top of the right parietal region) and seems to be due to the buckling of the metal while it was still fresh (ie before post depositional corrosion occurred). We'll come back to this in a moment.

5) In the foreground of the same photo can be seen the peak of the helmet, sheet metal with a clear keel. Not the sort of finish you would expect had it been intended to attach a griffin terminal here by soldering. The edges here are clearly brittle fractures made after post-depositional corrosion. We have no information what the interior looked like, was there for example a brazed seam between the two halves of the helmet visible here?

Nota bene: There is absolutely NO information about the results of the examination of the object which reveal anything about the technology of manufacture (except the single misleading word: "cast" in the PAS record, the object as a whole quite clearly is not "cast"). Many of the 'records' in the PAS database are equally superficial, which rather casts doubt on their fulfilment of all but the most minimalist requirements of "preservation by record".

Having attempted to discuss on the basis of the poor information the public have the state of the object at the time of discovery, I'd like to turn attention away from the artistic aspects of the reconstruction of the pretty thing we saw in the auction to the more archaeological question of the damage of the object in the ground. Ms Worrell reckons it was lying face down and "folded", whatever that means. Well, what does that mean?

If (ignoring that word 'folded') she means the whole helmet was lying face down in a hole, how could one account for the damage we see evidenced by the state of the fragments? Element four consists of the FRONT part of the helmet which has been smashed into pieces - but then how could that happen in the ground (these are in part post-depositional breaks) if the helmet was lying face down, and the back (element 2) is for the large part undamaged? Perhaps she meant that the visor was lying face down and the helmet was nested IN it (do they in their reconstructed form nest in that way?) which accounts for the two largest elements being preserved - but then how did the damage to the upper part of the helmet occur if it was lying horizontally as Ms Worrell asserts (presumably on the basis of what the finder(s) said)? In particular, why does it affect both the front AND the back (which would be nested deeper in the ground)? In fact where is the entire back part of the peak of the helmet? Its fragments are not shown in any of the PAS photos. There should be more pieces showing the effects of the substantial distortion which caused the "roll" on part of element 4. Where are the missing bits? If they are missing, how did they become disassociated from the rest of the bits? On what basis in fact was the upper part of this helmet reconstructed?

It seems to me that this must involve guesswork. What has been reconstructed is a vision of the helmet as it looked "in use". What we do not see is how this helmet looked when deposited complete in the ground. Something clearly happened to it before it corroded, there is severe buckling in the peak of the helmet, an event totally erased from the history of the object in the reconstruction. Yet, following the distortion of the object is a key to understanding what it looked like before it was damaged. I'd like to see the documentation made of the process of analysis of this buckling which must (jolly well should) have preceded the reconstruction of the "unbent" form. What we see is quite perplexing.

In passing one might ask how the restorer coped with fitting the "rolled' fragment into his/her reconstruction (which is in fact a deconstruction of the state in which the object found its way into the ground). There is only a limited amount of hiding you can do with green paint. After two thousand years in Cumbrian soil, the metal would be mineralised and therefore surely not malleable enough to be simply unrolled. Was this fragment omitted from the reconstruction? Was it flattened by sticking nylon gossamer over it both sides to keep the bits together and bashing it with a hammer and then moulding the mosaic of little splinters into the desired form (unethical but effective)? Why can it not be seen anywhere on the finished form? Is there ANY documentation of the "conservation" work at all and where is it?

Now I suspect that it is this buckling which Sally Worrell interprets as "folding". But its not folding, is it? This is probably fairly thin metal sheet (nota bene the thickness is nowhere described in the PAS report) and it looks like the peak of the helmet was bashed in. Only afterwards did it corrode and then the post-depositional breaks occurred. So when was it "bashed in"? In use? In some ritual act of disfigurement before it was deposited? In the ground?

What seems to have happened is that the peak of the helmet was pushed down inside the upper part of the helmet, causing a "roll" in the metal on the right parietal region and maybe a buckled ridge on the left. Maybe the force with which this was done was responsible for detachment of the griffin. In fact if you look at the front of the helmet as displayed in Christie's it can be seen that one eye is higher than the other, and the neckguard is at different heights on right and left, there is a stress crack at the bottom of the visor on the (wearer's) right. The whole helmet seems to have been slightly distorted (twisted slightly) by some action.

Was this how it looked when deposited? Perhaps. But if so, the peak-buckling damage occurred near the findspot - because if it had happened in some distant skirmish and was then brought to another place, why is the detached griffin still present in the assemblage?

This leads us to consider the possibility of another scenario - that the damage occurred when it was in the ground, which is why the detached griffin was found associated with the damaged helmet. But then (barring mechanisms involving second century bulldozers, giant armour-plated moles tunnelling, alien spacecraft takeoff or continental drift), such damage could not be caused if the helmet was lying horizontally in the soil "face down". It is more likely that the peak caved in under vertical pressure (or a blow). Like for example if it was sitting upright in a pit and somebody stomped on the peak (to make it fit in the hole) or drove a heavy cart over the pit where it had been previously shallowly buried. If however it was an empty helmet in a hole, applying pressure to the peak would be more likely to buckle the lower edge of the helmet to an extent greater than we see here. It would seem that at the time the peak collapsed, the lower part of the interior of the helmet was supported not only by something outside (earth) but also inside. Maybe it was partly filled with earth that had seeped in but leaving an airspace in the peak - or, perhaps at the time of burial and stomping, the helmet contained something else - like the wearer's severed head. At some later stage soil movements caused some of the elements to fracture after the metal had become brittle through corrosion. Perhaps the summit of the peak and griffin (elements 1 and 5) dropped inside the helmet as a result.

Another reason to postulate that the state of the surivuing bits strongly suggest that helmet was buried upright and not horizontally is the disposition of the missing fragments. Bits are missing from the projecting neckguard (damaged when the helmet was stomped on from above?) and around the back of the peak of the helmet, in particular in the region of the buckled edge caused by the stomping. If the helmet had been sitting vertically in a pit when discovered, it is precisely this region of the object that would have been uppermost, and therefore subject to accidental damage and disturbance/removal during any (ancient or modern) agricultural activity) of removed unnoticed at the time when a metal detector bleeped and a "ten inch deep" hole was dug to retrieve it.

I really cannot see (though stand to be corrected) how the PAS can explain away these facts with reference to their own documentation and applying the model: "the visor was found placed face downwards and the helmet had been folded prior to deposition". The point is if the Anonymous Single Finder who was a plural reports the object was found "in this 'ole 'ere m8" and it was lying horizontally "folded", but the physical state of the fragments, according to the 'documentation' made by the PAS is inconsistent with that model, but instead consistent with a completely different scenario, it really casts (another) doubt on the whole sorry story.

Barendina Smedley observes that what was bought at Christie's was in effect a recent pastiche and drew attention to the fact that it is difficult to see how one can arrive at something like that from the battered bits which came down to London, fresh from Cumbrian soil. The shiny arty object (which for all we know could be a few bits of ancient bronze supported on chicken wire and polyfilla painted green) bought for two million quid is not quite a reconstruction of the state in which this archaeological find was in through most of its two thousand years existence.

I suggest that there are disturbing discrepancies in the story of the discovery which indicate that it too is a convenient pastiche which has been hiding some important elements. What is especially galling is the way that the publicly-funded PAS allowing itself once again to be drawn in to the conspiracy of silence and being used to buttress the 'sanitised' and secretive story of how another part of Britain's fragile and finite archaeological record (supposedly belonging to us all as our "common heritage") has become a geegaw, the plaything of a rich afficionado of dugup "classical art".

UPDATE 1: Some more photos here, including two valuable ones taken at Christies which give additional information missing from the PAS 'record'. They show the inside of the helmet, showing the thickness of the metal, the rather remarkable corrosion products inside the visor and its state of preservation. Sadly we do not have a shot up the inside of the 'phrygian cap' at the back - doh! Now I've seen that type of corrosion on uncleaned coin sales sites, where some sellers even give it a name, and its not "Cumbrian wet soil corrosion".

The interior of the Reconstructed Crosby Garrett helmet (photo by "Caballo", 4th October 2010).

UPDATE 2 (4/11/10): Quite by accident I find that there is now yet another new photograph on the PAS website which shows the helmet in an "even more as-found state" than the five photos in the database when I wrote the above post which it seemed would represent the state of the object when Sally Worrel recorded it a few days after the discovery (I assumed they were her photos made at that time). The new photo somewhat alter the conclusions that one can come to about the state of the object in the ground, in fact I wonder whether that was the purpose of the PAS in posting it, since what was shown on their website was indeed totally at odds with the "official" account of how it was found. I have decided not to edit this text in the light of the new photo. Let this be an indication of the degree to which having the full information available about such finds is important. That information was missing when I wrote this, leading to mistaken interpretations. How many other finds are there in the PAS where the additional information coming to light after the discovery has not made it to the pages of the database?