Friday Retrospect: Potential Unknown Parts of the Staffordshire Hoard on EBay?

Looking smug in
Bloomsbury
(SuALT website)

This is a rather shorter period between first publication and a  'retrospect' than I normally do, but - in the light of a recent Heritage Action text, it's worth reminding readers of this one from Thursday, 7 November 2019: 'Potential Unknown Parts of the Staffordshire Hoard on EBay?'

We know that the Staffordshire Hoard findspot was not fully explored at the time of discovery in July 2009, the original keyhole 'excavation' in autumn of that year and subsequent work in 2010 and in December 2012. Almost certainly in that time, objects from the hoard and associated with it have found their way into private collections in Europe and the US. Now the full (?) report of the objects found to date has appeared there is renewed interest in the hoard, so perhaps we might expect some of those items now to resurface. They would hardly likely to be labelled with a collecting history that specifically states them to be from this find. We should look very carefully at anything appearing that does not have proper and explicit provenances that looks like it could be some of this material. Obviously, dealers - knowing we are on the lookout for this kind of material - if their stock comprises licit artefacts would be at pains to present every scrap of evidence they have that places a distance between what they are selling and the Staffordshire Hoard. What are we to make of dealers that do not do this?

The text presents six items of Anglo-Saxon goldwork with skimpy collecting histories that look like teh sort of thing the Staffordshire Hoard or the surrounding area at Hammerwich could be producing for illicit seekers with metal detectors. When, on 7th Nov, this text appeared online I wrote to the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme and Treasure Unit drawing attention to these characteristic items and their unclear origins, I was ignored by one of them (the one that has an 'out of office notification' that assures its recipient that they'd, however, have immediate attention if they were a metal detectorist with a hoard of gold on their hands) and the other institution in effect told me that since I'd spotted these items, to "sort it out yourself" as a private individual.

Apparently, this was another example (this is not the first time) of a "pragmatic decision" by central archaeological institutions in the British Isles to not to bother following up potential leads to illicit activity in the UK involving metal detectorists and the unexplained surfacing of Anglo-Saxon gold items. In this case, is it the fact that the seller is an archaeologist (he says) that is the issue, or that it might involve confronting a metal detectorist over them? Perhaps if there were coins involved, somebody from the BM's Coins and Medals Department with more gumption would get involved as happened over the fencing of items from the Leominsteer Hoard. Meanwhile, all of the freshly-surfaced apparently undocumented items mentioned in my earlier post remain today on open sale, right under everybody's noses.