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Two Princely c7th Anglo-Saxon Lyres

30/9/2019

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Few objects in early Anglo-Saxon archaeology are more evocative, than the so-called “warrior-lyres” or “hearpes” which have gradually emerged from analysis of mostly quite poorly preserved remains from some of the most famous 6-7th century burials. For those exploring this historic period, they also possess a unique power – transmitting to us another sensory dimension to enrich our sense of the Anglo-Saxon world. With accurately built replica lyres, we are granted the unique opportunity experience the sound of the 6-7th century mead hall, echoing across the centuries, which accompanied the first recorded stories and poems in our langu​age.

In autumn 2018, member Æd Thompson (having previously produced Dreamgifu – a reasonably faithful replica of the perfectly preserved 6th century Alemannic lyre from Trossingen) embarked on a project to produce two new lyres, of the (in some ways) more challenging Anglo-Saxon design.
  
Picture
Team members Marc and Jon, with a Trossingen-style lyre, midnight at Sutton Hoo.
​At the time of writing, six 6-7th century lyres have been excavated from Anglo-Saxon contexts in England (with a further 3-4 cases of components having been found); these lyres are;
  • Taplow Princely Burial (Exc. 1882; Bruce-Mitford, 1983)
  • Sutton Hoo Mound 1 (Exc. 1939; Bruce-Mitford, 1975 & 1983)
  • Bergh Apton, Grave 22 (Exc. 1973; Green et al. 1978).
  • Morning Thorpe. Grave 97.  (Exc. 1975; Green et al. 1987).
  • Snape Grave 32 (Exc. 1992; Filmer-Sankey et al. 2001).
  • Prittlewell Princely Burial (Exc. 2003; Blackmore et al. 2019)
​ Of these, three are from the highest status Anglo-Saxon burials ever discovered, and all share many common features; a rounded rectangular frame (maple wood, where identifiable) originally spanned by 6 
strings (in turn consistent with depictions such as folio 30v of the 8th century Vespasian Psalter) and a string-arch or yoke of a separate piece of wood, with grain perpendicular or curving, which was jointed into the pillars of the body by means of sophisticated half-hidden mortise and tenon joints, reinforced by various designs of (sometimes decorated) metal escutcheons riveting through the tenon. 

​This is the defining feature of early Anglo-Saxon lyres which distinguishes them from their continental counterparts.  While continental examples (such as the lyres from Cologne, Trossingen or Oberflacht) with bodies cut from a single piece, have grain running vertically on the yoke, thus liable to vertical splitting under a combination of string pressure and “shake” from fluctuating humidity, the sophisticated carpentry of early Anglo-Saxon lyres ensures there is no vertical grain on the yoke, thereby reducing the likelihood of this kind of failure. This may have been an elaborate adaptation to improve the resilience of such lyres, in the context of the fluctuating humidity of Britain’s more maritime climate. 
Picture
Remains of the lyre from Sutton Hoo Mound 1. British Museum. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
While our understanding of early Anglo-Saxon lyres was first shaped by the careful re-interpretation of hastily collected fragments from Sutton Hoo and Taplow, and by analysis of poorly preserved, less high-status examples excavated in modern times, the discoveries in 2003-4 of a lyre in the Prittlewell Princely Burial, excavated en-bloc, and the near perfectly preserved Alemannic lyre from Trossingen (which, though of different design, fills some important knowledge gaps) have shed new light on these instruments.   Contrary to some commentary, the organic elements of the Prittlewell Princely burial are not especially well preserved, but were, importantly, largely undisturbed, and then excavated and analysed with unprecedented meticulousness and care, and with the aid of cutting-edge technology.   The outline of the lyre was immediately obvious in the soil stain, giving its shape and size, together with the telltale grey-green stains at the upper pillars of silver or copper-alloy escutcheons. Although representations in the media had initially implied these were sub-triangular (like those of the Bergh-Apton and Taplow lyres) images of the remains in situ appeared to be circular, like those of the Snape lyre; a detail that was later confirmed.  However, little more information on this lyre (save for the roundness of its escutcheons, conventional form, and almost exact correspondence to the dimensions of the Sutton Hoo lyre) was made widely available for the following 16 years, until the somewhat unexpected publication of the Prittlewell Princely Burial report in summer 2019 – a matter of weeks after the completion of the first of the two replica lyres concerned here.

"Glōming" -  A Lyre inspired by Prittlewell


​​“Glōming” – (A.S. for “moonlight”) began in late 2018, and was intended to be a conservative interpretation of the limited information then available concerning the Prittlewell Lyre.   Reconstructing finds on which only partial information is available is always challenging, and the results always subject to re-evaluation when new discoveries come to light. In such cases, where details are not known, our guiding principle is parsimony; to stick within precedents established by other finds, and avoid extraneous or rare elements. 

​Glōming began with a rare piece of genuine, air dried English field maple (Acer campestre) – the native species of maple in England. This is the wood which was used for almost all known lyre examples, yet is rarely available today in pieces of sufficient breadth, as field maples rarely grow to sufficient size in modern times to yield such large planks.  Maple is both easy to carve but also hard enough at the surface to sand and polish to a shine, feel crisp and durable, and also often features, in addition to its grain, “flame” figuring running perpendicular, like warm clouds running across the surface. While this was undesirable on Dreamgifu – the Trossingen replica, where the natural figure of the wood clashed slightly with the carefully carved surface decoration, the (presumed) plain surfaces of Anglo-Saxon lyres allow the figure of the wood itself to stand alone.

Picture
Remains of the lyre from the Prittlewell Princely burial, in situ, during excavation. (Unknown source). Outline of the lyre is clearly discernible, along with the circular escutcheons at the top of the pillars.
​​The lyre body was cut to the same shape and dimensions as that which is understood of the famous lyre from Sutton Hoo Mound 1, and, following inferences from the 3D shape of the Trossingen lyre, was very gently tapered so as to be marginally wider at the base than at the tops of the pillars. An integral end-peg was included, again following the precedent of the Trossingen lyre.  The body was hollowed out, such that the walls were only approx 4mm all around.    This hollow section which forms the sound box actually continued up the pillars on many examples, but how high these sound-box extensions carried up the pillars was quite variable across known examples. In the absence of any more information on the Prittlewell lyre, the hollow of the pillars was ended just above half way to the joints, in approximately the same position as on the Sutton Hoo lyre.
Picture
Planning the yoke / string-arch/arm for Gloming - replica 7th century Anglo-Saxon lyre. By carefully positioning the template around a branch union, it is possible to achieve the curving grain, round the arch, which is seen on the Sutton Hoo lyre remains.
As previously discussed, the jointed-in yoke was an essential and defining feature of early Anglo-Saxon lyres – either with horizontal, or arching / curving grain. Arching grain is clearly to be seen on the remains of the Sutton Hoo lyre, where the yoke has shrunk in on itself as it has decayed, curling like a bishop’s crook. 
Picture
Carving tenon on the string-arch/arm/yoke for Gloming - replica 7th century Anglo-Saxon lyre. Grain visible curving round the arch.
It has been speculated this detail could have been achieved by selecting a rare branch with the right curve, naturally, or by “training” a tree branch as it grew over decades, to adopt the desired curvature.  However, this can also be achieved by cutting the arch from a plank which has itself been cut near a branch-union, where the grain of the bough joining the side of the trunk would be concentric, like a bullseye in the plank. By cutting the arch from around this “bullseye” the grain of the arch is curved.  This was what was done for the yoke of Glōming – from a plank of field maple heartwood, resulting in a rich, darker shade contrasting with the paler lyre body. However, as earlier discussed, maple has “flame” running perpendicular to its grain, which in some areas of the tree can be even more vivid and manifest as “quilting”. Where the grain is curving, the flame or quilting will be perpendicular to this, therefore running radially, as can be seen on Glōming’s yoke.   This sort of figuring is a natural side-effect of the selection of wood, would probably not be detectable in the archaeological remains, and we do not know to what extent our ancestors would have appreciated its aesthetic qualities. Nevertheless, the entirely natural, unusual look of this carefully planned arch is perhaps the most distinctive feature of this particular lyre. 
​Joining the string-arch/arm or yoke to the body (pillars) of the lyre was the most challenging part of the lyre build – an aspect which Æd had not attempted before. 
​The mortises were chiselled out of the upper and inner faces of the pillars, such that they are entirely invisible from the outside aspect of the lyre; a process made more difficult because the opposite pillar actually partially blocks access. Tenons were then carved on the yoke piece, and fine-tuned such that they lock into place – ultimately, finally fixed by means of animal glue (also acting as a filler) and the escutcheons.  The result of this process, on Glōming, was that the arch was fixed into place with admittedly slightly imperfect (first attempt!) but strong, barely tapering mortise and tenon joints.
The sound-board, of maple tonewood, was carefully shaped, and added with animal glue only, eschewing the copper alloy brads or nails of the Sutton Hoo and Cologne lyres respectively. The lyre was then carefully sanded smooth. 
Picture
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With limited information available concerning the fittings of the Prittlewell lyre we were keen to avoid anything overly elaborate or fanciful, and so, we interpreted the circular escutcheons as simple silver discs, fixed with a central rivet as the Snape disc escutcheons had been, and recessed into the surface. For decoration, we borrowed a design from a contemporaneous “shield” pendant with a design formed of punched dots and, to match, we added perpendicular metal strip fittings across the tops of the sound-board, like those seen on the Bergh Apton and Snape lyes, and similar to the diagonally disposed strips seen on the Morning Thorpe and (then unknown to us) on the Prittlewell lyre. With the publication of the Prittlewell report, we now know that the disc fittings represented here in silver, were actually gilded copper alloy, with interlacing decoration, and a central garnet setting; far more elaborate than had been expected.
​
Although stray bridges have been found in other contexts and from other centuries, excavated early Anglo-Saxon lyres have not yielded any traces of bridges, suggesting they were typically made of wood. We added a bridge of the same maple-wood as the rest of the lyre, in the over all shape of the preserved bridge from the Trossingen lyre.  We also added pyramidal-tipped, tapering tuning pegs, hand carved from the most durable possible wood – native English box wood. 
​Even more mysterious are the tailpieces of such lyres, though it has long been assumed that they did exist, to fix the strings to the end of the lyre. It is here that the publication of the research on the Prittlewell lyre has been a game-changer, revealing an oval loop of metal and (probable) leather strip much like a triangular buckle. This was wholly unexpected, as it was thought likely that such tailpieces were more likely to be made entirely of organic materials and resembling those of violins – with holes to tie the strings to. It was along these lines that the tailpiece of Glōming was made, of green ox-horn, though in future it may be replaced by a new one implementing new insights. 

​​Following the stringing of this lyre, the tone was immediately remarkable, and only continued to improve; a quality arguably attributable, in particular, to the rare field maple used for its body, with wonderful transmission and acoustic purity.   The overall result of the project was enormously satisfying, and although due to the publication of the Prittlewell report it could no longer be presented as a Prittlewell lyre reconstruction, it remains a wonderful instrument and conservatively representative of early Anglo-Saxon lyres in general. 
Picture
"Glōming" - 6-7th century Anglo-Saxon lyre, by Thegns of Mercia member Æd Thompson. www.thegns.org

"Throstle" -  The Taplow Lyre

​In stark contrast, the second of this pair of lyres – “Throstle” – (AS for “Song Thrush”) was never intended to be generally representative, but rather, the first complete replica of the unique lyre from the Taplow Princely Burial.
Incompetently excavated in 1882, the early 7th century burial mound at Taplow, Buckinghamshire, remained the greatest Anglo-Saxon burial known until the opening of Sutton Hoo Mound 1 in 1939, but the chaotic nature of the original excavation meant many of the items of “treasure” unceremoniously ripped from context remained little understood, and it was well into the following century before the two wonderful gilded bird fittings and associated wooden fragments were identified as part of a lyre.

​Analysis of those pieces by Rupert Bruce Mitford, partly in light of work studying the Sutton Hoo lyre, revealed unique features – angled joints, and ox-horn plates recessed into both sides of the yoke / string-arm, fixed in place with silver pins. Bruce Mitford further identified a matching pair of articulating silver, or silver-plated fittings which were likely from a hand-strap, fixed in some way into the body of the lyre.  We were determined to explore these elements by producing the first ever full reproduction of this uniquely elaborate lyre. 

Picture
One of a number of conflicting burial schemes for the Taplow princely burial, excavated in 1882. The haphazard excavation and lack of clarity regarding the layout of finds meant that the lyre fragments long went unidentified.
​​Like the previous lyre, “Throstle” began with a rare piece of field maple, although, cut closer to the heart-wood, it had denser grain and a richer, redder colour – this time contrasting to a paler maple soundboard added to the front. This led to an almost “inverse” aesthetic to Glōming.  .  As the body of the Taplow lyre was not discernible from the excavation, shape and size was again based on the dimensions understood of the Sutton Hoo lyre, by now further reinforced by the almost identical proportions of the lyre from Prittlewell. The height of the hollow sections of the pillars (and extensions of the soundboard onto the pillars) was not known for the original lyre, and with this aspect being highly variable, we again chose to follow the middle-ground precedent set by the Sutton Hoo lyre; this would have implications for the utility of the wrist strap discussed later. 
​
The section of the body plank which had been cut out, to form the pillars, was used to make the yoke / string arm, with horizontal grain. Shaping this piece was a much greater challenge than the previous lyre, as the shape had to flow with the curves of the (slightly asymmetrical) gilded bird fittings (replicas of which had been produced for this build, by our associate historic jeweller dangeld.co.uk), accommodate horn facings, and join to the pillars with uniquely difficult, diagonally disposed half-hidden mortise and tenon joints. Although finer details of these joints (to what extent the tenons tapered, or had rounded tips) is not known, given the sophistication implied by the fittings and augmented yoke, it was decided that the tenons should be tapering and round-tipped like those of the Sutton Hoo lyre.  
Possibly aided by the slightly harder and more fine-grained heart-wood, along with by now having had more practice, it was possible to achieve a much tighter and neater joint than had been achieved on Glōming.  However, gradual adjustment of the joints towards the best possible fit led to the pillars being shortened each time, such that the lyre ended up a couple of centimetres shorter than Gloming, though still broadly within the evidenced range.
​
Once jointed (but not fixed) work began on the extra details of the yoke; its outline was fine-tuned to flow well with the bird fittings, and the holes for the rivets continuous with the backs of these fittings were drilled, so they could be test-fitted into place. With their ultimate positions now exactly known and marked, the positions of peg holes were chosen, and the recesses for the ox-horn veneer were carved into the front.
The horn was then carefully shaped to fit, and all pieces were test-fitted together, before the peg-holes were made, and silver rivets installed. 
Picture
Remains of the lyre from the 7th century Anglo-Saxon "Taplow Princely Burial" showing gilded copper-alloy bird fittings with inlaid eyes, and remains of the wood of the string arch, with ox-horn veneers held in place with two pins between each peg hole. British Museum. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Picture
One of a matching pair of rivet-fixed silver or silver-plated hinging strap fittings with leather residues, from the Taplow princely burial, and though to be part of a lyre hand strap system.
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String-arm/yoke of "Throstle" - replica of the 7th century Taplow lyre, in progress, with arch, horn veneers and bird fittings test-fitted, and not yet fixed into place. Arch is not yet drilled for the pegs and pins.
​The joints were then glued and the bird fittings installed, with their pins riveting onto a silver backplate based on fragmentary remains. During this phase of the build it became clear, contrary to some earlier commentary, that this arrangement was not a repair but rather, represented a carefully planned design that was original to the lyre. There may be evidence of another lyre with similar decoration; a plate of bone, similar to the pieces of horn shown here, was found in a 5th century grave in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and may represent an earlier example of similar design.

​Replicas of the unusual strap-fittings were fabricated from silver, but their installation presented a problem. It was clear that, in order to be fixed by riveting (as implied by the rivets present) it would be necessary for them to be fixed into a hollow part, but, vulnerable to knocks, such fixings would risk ripping out the wall of lyre. To be protected from knocks, it was decided the fittings should be mounted into the inner aspect of the pillars, and, further, they were mounted high into the corner of the hollow, beside the solid section of the pillars, for extra stability.  These were spanned by a leather wrist-strap, based on leather remains found inside the original silver fittings, with some simple geometric tooling, and the addition of a little silver buckle.

Picture
Hand-strap on "Throstle" - reproduction of the Taplow lyre. Strap integrates replicas of silver, or silvered copper-alloy hinging fittings with leather traces, in the British Museum, identified by Rupert Bruce Mitford as hand-strap fittings from the lyre.
​Like the previous lyre, the thin maple-wood tonewood soundboard was glued into place with hot animal-glue, and the outside was sanded smooth. As no strip-fittings had been identified among the Taplow lyre remains, of the type which rivet over and hide the top edge of the sound board on the pillars, on the Morning Thorpe, Bergh Apton, Snape, and Prittlewell lyres, we decided not to include this feature on this reconstruction, and so, like on most reconstructions of the Sutton Hoo lyre, the transition from soundboard to pillar can be seen. 

This replica of the Taplow lyre was finished, like Glōming, with conservatively chosen, essential but non-extant components; a maple-wood bridge, pyramidal-tipped box-wood pegs, and, for the time being, a tailpiece of bone, which may yet be exchanged for a Prittlewell tailpiece in the future.

When strung, Throstle quickly adopted a wonderfully rich, though slightly brighter tone than Glōming. The wrist-strap, tightly spanning the hinged silver fittings, is extremely stable and allows for more technical playing. However, its position is arguably slightly too high to be fixed to the wrist. It is possible that the strap fittings may have been mounted lower on the pillars, particularly if the hollow sections ended lower (such as on the Morning Thorpe or Prittlewell lyres), which would allow the strap to be used on the wrist while still having room for the fingers to reach the back of the strings. However, with the configuration of this build, the same, or even greater utility can be achieved by buckling the strap onto the hand. In doing so, the fingertips are placed closer to the backs of the strings, and the thumb can be hooked underneath one of the fittings for extra stability.

Although this lyre eschews some more optional elements (soundboard strip fittings, and pins or brads) for reasons of conservatism with respect to the known remains, the Taplow lyre’s uniquely decorated string-arch and sophisticated strap fitting arrangement suggest it may have been most complex of all known Anglo-Saxon lyres, outshining even the one from Sutton Hoo Mound 1.
Picture
"Throstle" - Replica of the princely 7th century Anglo-Saxon Taplow lyre, by Æd Thompson, Thegns of Mercia.

​The unexpectedly rich and loud tones of both lyres have opened up new possibilities for styles of play.  As interest in Northern European ancient music, and lyres in particular, grows, instruments based on these historic finds are becoming increasingly popular and widely available. Attention to detail applied to these instruments is highly variable, and while looser interpretations may be sufficient for other purposes, it is clear from study of archaeological finds that these lyres were enormously carefully designed, sophisticated and well crafted. The very great labour lavished on each discovered Anglo-Saxon lyre is illustrative of the importance of poetry and music (the sound of the mead-hall) within their culture. Accurate reproductions of such lyres provide the unique opportunity to access and experience the sound of the mead-hall, across 1400 of history. 

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to professional luthier and Anglo-Saxon lyre expert Michael J. King for his advice which laid the foundations for these lyre builds.    We are also enormously grateful to the British Museum's Early Medieval Curator, Sue Brunning, for her help, conducting additional investigations into the remains of the Taplow lyre and taking extra photographs specially to help inform this work. 

References

Blackmore, L., Blair, I., Hirst, S., Scull, C. (2019) The Prittlewell princely burial: excavations at Priory Crescent, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 2003.  Museum of London Archaeology. MOLA Monograph Series 73

Bruce-Mitford, R. & Bruce-Mitford, M. 1970. The Sutton Hoo Lyre, Beowulf, and the Origins of the Frame Harp. Antiquity 44. Antiquity Publications Ltd. Cambridge. pp 7-13.

Bruce-Mitford, R. 1975. The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial Volume I: Excavations, Background, the Ship, Dating and Inventory. British Museum Publications Limited. London.

Bruce-Mitford, R. 1983. The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial Volume III: Late Roman and Byzantine Silver, Hanging Bowls, Drinking Vessels, Cauldrons and other Containers, Textiles, the Lyre, Pottery Bottle and other Items. The Trustees of The British Museum. London. 

Filmer-Sankey, W. & Pestell, T. 2001. Snape Anglo-Saxon cemetery: excavations and surveys 1824-1992. Environment and Transport, Suffolk County Council. Ipswich, Suffolk.

Green, B. & Rogerson, A. 1978. The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Bergh Apton, Norfolk: catalogue. Gressenhall.

​Green, B. & Rogerson, A. & White, S. G. 1987. The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Morning Thorpe, Norfolk. Vol. 1, Catalogue. Norfolk Archaeological Unit. Dereham. 

Hillberg, J., 2015. Early Lyres in Context-A Comparative Contextual Study on Early Lyres and the Identity of Their Owner/User. [Masters Thesis, Lund University]

Lawson, G. 1978. The Lyre from Grave 22. In: Green, B. & Rogerson, A. (eds) The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Bergh Apton, Norfolk: catalogue. Gressenhall: pp 87-97

Lawson, G. 1987. Report on the Lyre Remains from Grav 97. In: Green, B. & Rogerson, A. & White, S. G. (eds) The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Morning Thorpe, Norfolk. Vol. 1, Catalogue. Norfolk Archaeological Unit. Dereham. pp 166-171.

Lawson, G. 2001. The Lyre Remains from Grave 32. In: Filmer-Sankey, W. & Pestell, T. (eds) Snape Anglo-Saxon cemetery: excavations and surveys 1824-1992. Environment and Transport, Suffolk County Council. Ipswich, Suffolk. pp 215-223

Leeds, E. T. & Harden, D. B. 1936. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Abingdon, Berkshire. University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.

Museum of London. Archaeology Services, 2004. The Prittlewell prince: the discovery of a rich Anglo-Saxon burial in Essex. Museum of London Archaeology Service.

Pollington, S., 2008. Anglo-Saxon burial mounds: princely burial in the 6th & 7th centuries. Anglo-Saxon Books.

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Shield of the Staffordshire Hoard

25/5/2019

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"Armed with the precedent set by the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 shield, pieces of possible shield-decoration from the Staffordshire Hoard, and current understanding of 7th century shield evolution, we embarked on a project to produce a shield that would not look out of place in the hands of Penda, Oswald, or one of their lieutenants. "

Picture
"Eagle and fish" gold sheet fitting from the Stafforshire Hoard. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0).
Nothing is more synonymous with Anglo-Saxon archaeology and history than the fabulous treasures which were uncovered in 1939 at Sutton Hoo, yet there is nothing “typical” or “representative” about the vast majority of this truly remarkable assemblage.  The enormous highly decorated shield, for example, integrating hundreds of components, lacks any particularly appropriate English parallels, and its closest comparators come from similarly impressive burials from the roughly contemporaneous Vendel Culture in Eastern Sweden.  So remarkable and “exotic” is the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 (SHM1) shield, that the still foremost study of Early Anglo-Saxon Shields; Dickinson & Härke (1992) all but excluded it from consideration. Anglo-Saxon shields with even modest metallic decoration (such as appliques or boss apex discs hardly visible except at very close quarters) are exquisitely rare and occur mainly from the mid 6th century; it is unclear to what extent this reflects a decline in the fashion or is simply an already rare item among furnished burials becoming invisible with the decline of the rite itself. Variation in the lavishness of shield ornamentation could be a battlefield indicator of rank and status, though most fittings are too small to have been particularly visible in this context, and although it is possible to sort the limited sample of decorated shields into “ranks” of embellishment (Dickinson (2005) and Mortimer (2011)) there is a danger of implying false near-equivalence between the only “top rank” shield of SHM1, and “second rank” shields (the most elaborate from the more commonly regarded “English sample”) such as 6th century Bidford-182 (see our reconstruction and article here) and the Tranmer House Shield (Sutton Hoo Grave 868), which are, in terms of crude count of components, at least 20 times less elaborate. Given extremely limited organic preservation, painted designs, wooden or leather appliques might be feasible, but the picture from grave archaeology is that, despite being the largest, most conspicuous “display surface”, even a high-status Anglo-Saxon warrior’s shield would have looked quite plain.
Contrary to this picture from undisturbed grave-shield finds, fragments of decoration from the robbed Sutton-Hoo Mound 2 (SHM2) equivalent to elements of the SHM1 shield suggest that the latter was not, in fact, unique, and the enormous abundance of jewelled 7th century “warrior bling” in the Staffordshire Hoard (STH / “the Hoard”) provides overwhelming evidence for conspicuous wealth and status display, in the form of jewelled war-gear, on the battlefields of the early-to-middle Anglo-Saxon period.  The most senior battle-companions of the occupant of SHM1 (probably Raedwald – King of the East Angles) would likely be similarly bejewelled, and so would other 7th century kings particularly characters like Edwin and Oswald of Northumbria, and Penda of Mercia, who, through political manoeuvring and conquest would succeed Raedwald as notional holders of Anglian “imperium”; it is hard to imagine these warrior kings – wearers of bejewelled helmets and wielders of gold-hilted swords – not having similarly impressive shields.
​

Armed with the precedent set by the SHM1 shield, pieces of possible shield-decoration from the Staffordshire Hoard, and current understanding of 7th century shield evolution, we embarked on a project to produce a shield that would not look out of place in the hands of Penda, Oswald, or one of their lieutenants.

The Iron Fittings

​​First came consideration of the shield’s iron fittings; the boss and grip-reinforcer.  As an assemblage almost exclusively made up of precious metal fittings torn from larger objects, it almost goes without saying that the Hoard contains no shield bosses or grips, and it is by no means straightforward extrapolating what iron-fittings would have accompanied the later elements of the Hoard. It would not be appropriate to raid the rather “Vendel Culture” shield boss from the SHM1 shield with its deeply curved low dome, rather old-fashioned wide flange, and florid decoration; we were convinced this shield should integrate a more “English” and contemporary boss.  Earlier styles may still have been in partial use in the mid 7th century, especially in more remote (with respect to 
Picture
Low-domed, wide buttoned and flanged mid 6th century iron shield boss. (Replica by Jason Green / Wieland Forge). By the mid 7th century Anglo-Saxon shield-bosses had changed considerably.
​continental influence) territories like Mercia,  but, at least according to waning grave archaeology, these decades saw a gradual shift from the classic “insular” styles of Anglo-Saxon shield bosses with their low domes and often broad apical buttons, to the tall “sugarloaf” style already popular on the continent, which would (at least according to limited iconography) dominate well into the late Anglo-Saxon period. Our ability to thoroughly examine this phase of shield evolution is limited, for it coincides with the twilight of the furnished burial rite. The still most comprehensive (though very much out-of-date) study on these later shields, Evison (1963) suffers from a degree of conflation between insular and true sugarloaf (later designated Dickinson Type 7 / Hines SB5) bosses, and importantly, its chronology is skewed (relative to modern understanding) having been written prior to the pivotal re-dating of the SHM1 burial and its gear, which had knock-on impacts on comparative dating of all other Anglo-Saxon archaeology. 

​The true, fully developed sugarloaf shield boss form (Evison’s “tall curved cone”, Hines SB5-b/c) appears to have gradually emerged via, or in tandem with a short-lived phase of tall but relatively straight-coned bosses (still within Dickinson’s Type 7, or Hines SB5) with relatively tall, straight, sloping walls and limited overhanging carination (Evison’s “Tall straight cone”, or Hines SB5-a), in the second to third quarter of the 7th century. Notable examples of this form come from Wenden and Melbourn (Cambs), Croydon (Surrey), Faversham (Kent), West Knoyle Farm Stourton (Wilts), a particularly tall-walled example from Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk), and (at least according to Evison) somewhat lower (transitional?) examples from Salisbury Race-Course, Coombe Bisset (Wilts) and the famous 16th grave of the cemetery at Mount Pleasant, Alton (Hants).  With a relatively smooth continuity from “low” to “tall” bosses, sorting transitional examples (as noted by Evison) is an arbitrary business; a perhaps defining characteristic of tall sugarloaf bosses (as opposed to low insular bosses) given significant weight in the Hines (2013) analysis appears to be the number and shape of rivets, as sugarloaf bosses (including the tall-straight form) tend to be attached with small dome-headed rivets, often greater in number than the typical 4-5 larger disc-headed rivets of earlier boss types. Of course, especially given evidence for re-fitting of bosses, sorting and dating shield-bosses based mainly on the shape of their rivets could be unwise. 
Picture
Thegns replica mid to late 7th century "sugarloaf" shield boss. (By Jason Green, Wieland Forge).
Picture
"Tall straight cone" and "tall curved cone" shield bosses. Reproduced from Evison (1963).
​Importantly, the Coombe Bisset example was found with a garnet and shell cloisonné pyramid fitting (so-called “sword pyramid”) and the Alton case was found alongside a sword with cocked-hat pommel and hourglass grip collars, and the famous silver-gilt, garnet, and gold-filigree decorated buckle. The Bury St Edmunds and Melbourn examples were found with bronze buckles with folded back-plates secured by three small rivets (Bayliss and Hines BU7); a fashion of the 7th century found elsewhere in SHM17, and the Staffordshire Hoard.  Indeed, of any, this relatively rare type of shield boss shows the greatest co-occurrence with items similar to those in the Hoard. 
​We therefore chose the “tall straight cone” shield-boss for this shield, taking the boss from Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, as our exemplar. As with previous shield projects, we turned to Jason Green of Wieland Forge to produce the boss for us.
Tall bosses are challenging, especially as limited data suggests they were similar in weight, to earlier (smaller) boss forms; the same mass stretched further to produce a thinner but steeper-sided boss which would encourage blows to glance rather than bite into the thinner walls. The boss Jason produced was exactly the shape we’d hoped for, and wonderfully light.    To compliment this, again foregoing the rather “Vendel Culture” (and in an English context, retro) long grip and florid decoration of the SHM1 case, we made a simple Dickinson Type 1a(i) grip reinforcer (a slightly bow-tie shaped strap of iron, riveted at each end) – the simplest type, but the only one which commonly occurs with sugarloaf bosses (Dickinson & Härke, 1992). 
Picture
Reproduction of a mid 7th century "tall straight cone" sugarloaf shield boss, by Jason Green / Wieland Forge, ready for installation on the Staffordshire Hoard shield.

The Board

Another difficult aspect was the size of the board. The size of Anglo-Saxon shields is a contentious issue (discussed here), particularly due to misinterpretation of the otherwise invaluable data outlined in Dickinson and Harke (1992) concerning “maximum” and “minimum” shield sizes. The enormous SHM1 shield was around 92 cm in diameter (in line with ranges for the Vendel Culture analogues 0.84 to 1.1m), while the next largest – Ford 2 (with sugarloaf boss, and seax with silver fittings) was 90cm across; however the remainder of shields in Dickinson and Harke (1992) with probable board dimensions are considerably smaller than this, with the median of Anglo-Saxon grave shield max diameters (n=112) approximately 65cm.  That said it is noted that shield boards appear to increase in size towards the end of the early period (ie. Into the 7th century) and therefore a board on the upper end of the evidenced range would be reasonable.  From our own experience with replica shields, and our own size we have found 70-80 cm to be a respectable size for an average sized male, and (with one eye on the fittings we planned for it to comfortably frame) chose to make our new shield 77cm – not so enormous as the Sutton Hoo or Ford examples, but still well on the upper end of the evidenced range. 

Another critical detail was the thickness and shape of the board. The SHM1 shield board was slightly dished at the edges, and was thinner at its edges than at the strap-holder (half way out from the boss), while another shield from Pewsey (grave 34) was at least 2 mm thinner at the edge than at the boss (from 7 to 5mm). The careful carving of these boards in this manner may be for weight management, with thinner edges both reducing overall weight, but also, if carved off the front edge, subtly shifting the centre of mass of the shield closer to the grip, and bringing the weight closer to the grip improving manoeuvrability.  With the SHM1 shield, its slightly dished shape would place the grip-point actually forward of much of the board, thereby helping the carrier manage its considerable weight. 
Our shield would not be so large, but following these precedents we carved down approximately the outer third of the board, on the front only, to an almost blade-thin edge which, after application of skin product, would reach approx. 5mm in total.

We also took care to slightly recess the shield-boss into the front of the board. If this was done, it would be almost impossible to detect archaeologically, but is one of the possible solutions for the problem identified by Dickinson and Härke (1992) of the sloping flanges of Anglo-Saxon bosses, which if mounted flat, leave a gap beneath. By carving a complimentary recess into the board prior to application of the skin-product layers, a tight fit is guaranteed, as well as a pleasingly smooth surface on the front of the board, from the iron flange to the board cover. This also brings the heaviest element of the shield – the iron boss (and therefore, along with it, the shield’s centre of mass) a couple of millimetres closer to the grip, making the shield less cumbersome. 
Picture
The "Staffordshire Hoard Shield" in progress; after application of the leather on both sides, installation of the boss, and polishing, but prior to installation of any rim or board surface fittings.
​To both sides we applied 1.5-2mm thick veg tan bovine leather.  Although Dickinson and Härke (1992) note some cases where only one side of the shield was covered, the majority of shields seem to have had skin product on both sides, which, presumably held on by a sturdy (yet archaeologically fugitive) glue, would form a 3-layer composite greatly increasing strength and durability.  It is not clear to what extent skin product on shields was tanned, though the Sutton Hoo shield is described as being covered with “vegetable tanned cattle hide”.  Modern veg-tan leather is a reasonable analogue, easily wet moulded around the now 3D shape of the board, and working well with our historic glue of choice; hide glue (this oldest of glues made from the collagen of animal connective tissues, would be indistinguishable from the collagen present in the skin product). Modern veg-tan is, however, typically pale and anaemic compared to more tannin-saturated historic leather of other periods and therefore not representative of the aesthetic likely seen on Anglo-Saxon shields. We use a modern dye blend on such items carefully chosen to mimic the warm hues of tannin-saturated historic leathers. Although this is an attempt to simulate the (probable) look of their tanning process, dyed leather was not unknown to the 7th-8th century Anglo-Saxons, as evidenced by the binding of the famous Stonyhurst / Cuthbert Gospel, of rich red-coloured tanned goatskin (probably imported).    We followed this with much polishing, using our own blend of pure beeswax and raw neatsfoot oil (rendered fat from cattle) – both substances available to the Anglo-Saxons, which serve to condition, waterproof and provide shine to the leather surface. 
​

The Grip, and Assembly


Grips for Anglo-Saxon shields were formed in various ways; most commonly a piece of wood was lap-jointed in some manner (most commonly off-centre) spanning a pre-cut hole in the board with the joints reinforced with rivets; the iron element which typically survives, attached by those same rivets, is merely to reinforce the structure. Our own preference, however, is for an approach Dickinson termed “Type D”; forming the grip from the board wood, or rather, cutting two unequal lunate holes rather than one circular one, with the (off-centre) bridge between forming the basis of the grip. This approach is evidenced, accounting for approx 20% of cases, and is associated with slightly higher burial wealth among a sample which excludes Sutton Hoo (Dickinson and Harke, 1992). This grip was carved such as to be rounded on the front face to fill the hand, and wrapped tightly with a strip of leather; an approach seen on various finds including, importantly, preserved texture of binding on the grip reinforcer with the tall-straight sugarloaf boss from Melbourn. Shield grips were often off-centre, as this produces a more ergonomic and comfortable result; more space is needed for the back of the hand than for the fingertips (for archaeological examples see Dickinson & Harke, 1992). 

The boss was installed with eight small dome-headed rivets, shined up to contrast with the forge-blued surface of the boss. Although far plainer than the Sutton Hoo shield boss, or more typically “Anglo-Saxon” bosses from the 6th century, we were keen not to spoil Jason’s precise work by embellishing it beyond what is evidenced for its type. The Melbourn boss, according to one old report, had silver rivets, though this has not been confirmed, and the contrasting iron seen here is a small but conservative gesture towards that aesthetic. 
​
Picture
Replica Anglo-Saxon shield grip assembly (reinforcer type 1a(I), and grip construction type D) for the Staffordshire Hoard shield.
Picture
Replica mid 7th century shield boss (tall-straight cone sugarloaf) installed with eight dome-headed rivets onto the board of the new Staffordshire Hoard shield.

The Rim

All previous shields we have produced have included a simple stitched leather rim, yet our only surviving example of a kingly Anglo-Saxon shield (SHM1) had a rim formed of U-section bronze strips held in place by riveted clips, with decorative terminals (of three kinds; interlace-decorated rectangular plaques, and two different designs of dragon-head). Small fragments of metal edge-binding and clips have shown up elsewhere, though most are unlikely to represent entire rims. That said, such rims appear on at least one Vendel Culture shield, and on shields from earlier but culturally associated bog deposits including Nydam. We were keen to reproduce this element, with a Staffordshire Hoard “spin”, and member Dr Andrew Thompson began work on forming 2.45m of U-section bronze edging, with Æd grinding each piece smooth by hand. It is fair to say we greatly underestimated the amount of sometimes very uncomfortable work involved in this, and have perhaps gained insight into why this feature was so rare.
​
Picture
Bronze U-section strips, shaped by hammerwork by member Andrew Thompson and laboriously ground smooth, shown here prior to installation onto the edge of the new Staffordshire Hoard shield.
Picture
Bronze edge of the new shield installed. Also shown; Salin Style-2 interlace decorative clip terminal, produced by the pressblech technique, by member Æd Thompson

​Given the size of the board we decided on 12 decorated clips; four with rectangular plates (in this case made by pressblech) with Salin Style-2 interlace designs of a kind represented among the countless foil fragments from both Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard, four with wyrm-heads with garnet cabochon eyes borrowed from one of the two designs seen on the Sutton Hoo shield (produced for us by George Easton / danegeld.co.uk) and four adapted from the so-called “horse head” terminals from the Staffordshire Hoard (STH 678 et al). ​ ​  These terminals, though commonly referred to as "horses", could in fact be a different style of dragon-representation or even boar - the latter typically only distinguishable from other beast terminals by the presence of tusks.  If they do indeed represent horses, they would be the first  representation of this animal on Anglo-Saxon war-gear outside of pressblech foils. We have discussed the significance of horses in this context previously, here (link).

Picture
Rim of the new Thegns of Mercis: Shield of the Staffordshire Hoard showing "horse-head" clips by George Easton / danegeld.co.uk based on two zoomorphic terminals from the Staffordshire Hoard.
Picture
Rim of the new Thegns of Mercia: Shield of the Staffordshire Hoard showing dragon-head clips by George Easton / danegeld.co.uk, based on one of two designs seen on the rim of the Sutton Hoo Shield.

The Eagle and the Fish

Finally, we came to the board fittings.  The Staffordshire Hoard contains a number of fittings which could conceivably have come from a shield, and yet due to the lack of context which typifies this find, will likely forever be described with that so usefully ambiguous archaeological term “mount”.  One such item, the so-called “Eagles and Fish” fitting was identified as possibly having come from a shield early in the Hoard’s story, and this remains one of the best interpretations for it. It was fabricated from multiple pieces of gold sheet, yet had been wrenched from its mounting, and twisted and folded deliberately before deposition, rather like the processionary cross.
Picture
"Eagle and fish" gold sheet fitting from the Stafforshire Hoard. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0).
​Previous interpretations of this item (such as a replia shield produced early-on for exhibitions at Tamworth Castle) have placed it with the fish upwards, and birds divided by a vertical line of symmetry, yet when placed horizontally it appears not as two birds, but a single bird catching a fish at the water’s surface, with the reflection of both below the waterline. An additional pair of tiny stylised birds facing the same direction at the rear of the fish could be conceptualised as reflections of the bird in the turbulence created by the fish's fins. It is interesting to note that this one piece, if indeed shield ornamentation, spans and brings together the two best represented classes of zoomorphic shield appliques; those (like Mill Hill, Shelford, or SHM1) which depict birds of prey, and those (like Sheffields Hill, Barnes, or Eriswell) which represent fish. These motifs meet, as separate pieces, on the Tranmer House cemetery shield (Sutton Hoo Grave 868). The juxtaposition of birds and fish on shields, it has been suggested, represent binary concepts; sky and water, above and below; life and death. This is arguably brought into its sharpest relief with this unique piece from the Hoard with its vivid depiction of the waterline as veil between worlds.
​
In this context the bird; probably a white-tailed sea eagle (Earn) one of the three Wodanic beasts of battle, pulls its catch through the boundary between worlds, from its living world to its death; perhaps symbolising the harvesting of heroes by Woden. The placement of this object on the original shield board was, perhaps, a symbolic reminder that in battle, the veil between the world of the living and the dead was the shield itself. 
Picture
Faithful replica (by George Easton, danegeld.co.uk) of the gold sheet bird-and-fish fitting from the Staffordshire Hoard, installed on our new Thegns of Mercia "Shield of the Staffordshire Hoard".
​While the meaning of such items would normally be a matter of pure speculation, the Hoard analysts (publication pending) have discovered that the head of the fish was deliberately and precisely broken off in antiquity, perhaps to “dis-empower” the motif. If so, this would support Tania Dickinson’s thesis that animal art on shields represented symbols of superstitious / apotropaic protection for their wielders (Dickinson, 2005).
​
George produced a wonderful replica of this piece for us, and with it still falling into the category of “bird fitting” we, following the precedent set by the SHM1 shield, placed it on the right side, with the birds facing inward. 

The Wyrm

Another fitting made of thin sheet surfaced later in the Hoard’s story, for it was pieced together from many small fragments, by the Hoard conservators, and only unveiled a couple of years after the discovery was first made. This long slender piece has a golden (or gilded) border perforated with many rivet holes, while its core is filled with a deeply dug silver-niello design clearly conceived to mimic the patterns seen in garnet cloisonné. It is, at least superficially, reminiscent of the “tauscheringwork” which became fashionable in the Frankish sphere of influence in the mid 7th to 8th centuries, including wire inlays into blackened iron in patterns often mimicking cloisonné; perhaps a compensation for a collapse in the gold supply. This piece is actually that effect “in negative”; shapes of silver picked out with thin black detailing rather than the reverse, and with its ends broken, this slender piece has defied interpretation; we are aware of little comment on what it might have been, and tentatively, with awareness that the publication of the Hoard research looms, we offer this interpretation. 

The frequently placed attachment holes along the whole length of the slender body of the piece are reminiscent of another, familiar piece of similar form though quite different decoration, and close examination reveals that some of the dome-headed pins are still in situ, appearing perhaps a shield-thickness, in length.  Like this Hoard piece, the Sutton Hoo shield’s wyrm fitting features a gradually tapering, narrow body, with frequently placed small dome-headed pins along its borders, and a central field formed of decorated sheet runs up the middle of the tapering body. The tail is crimped, widening again to a fin, like the more crudely shaped triangular tail fin of the Hoard piece, and the fearsome head is attached by a narrow, easily broken or mangled neck; could a head have once sat on those silver-niello shoulders, to be 
deliberately broken off to “remove its power”, just like the fish mentioned above, or even the lone dragon-head of Sutton Hoo Mound 2?
The fiery-dragon, serpent or wyrm, like the eagle, symbolises death; both in the form of the devouring-fire of the funeral-pyre and the burial mound, which it guards and which is described in Beowulf.


​Hē gesēcean sceall hord on hrūsan þǣr hē hǣðen gold warað wintrum frōd
·         Beowulf, 2275-6.
​

“He is doomed to seek hoards in the ground, where he, old in winters, defends the heathen gold.” ​
As the final fitting for the shield, George produced for us a spectacular reproduction of the item pieced back together from the many Hoard fragments, integrating the fierce dragon-head from the Sutton-Hoo fitting, to, possibly for the first time in 1300 years, complete this beast.   We nervously installed it, with its 47 pins, into the shield board, in the same position that its East Anglian cousin sat on the shield from Sutton Hoo. 
​

Picture
Reproduction of previously unidentified and incomplete gold and silver-niello "jigsaw" strip fitting from the Staffordshire Hoard, reproduced by George Easton / Danegeld and installed on the Thegns of Mercia "Shield of the Staffordshire Hoard".
Picture
Reproduction of incomplete and previously unidentified Staffordshire Hoard "jigsaw" fitting (by George Easton / danegeld.co,uk) reconstructed here with the addition of a dragon-head (borrowed from the analogous Sutton Hoo mound 1 shield mount). We believe this comes close to its original form, and that this was indeed a shield fitting. Shown here mounted on the Thegns of Mercia "Shield of the Staffordshire Hoard".

Conclusion

This shield, at least in terms of physical size, represents our largest "treasure reconstruction" to date, and is the culmination of months of work, and two years of collaboration with our associate craftspeople.

Integrating a total of 10 individual zoomorphic elements and a bronze rim, but a conservative mid 7
th century boss and grip, this build is, we hope, representative of the kind of shield that may have been carried into battle by the warrior elites who wore the Staffordshire Hoard.

​

References

Bayliss, A., 2017. Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods of the 6th and 7th centuries AD: a chronological framework. Routledge.
Bruce, S.G., 2015. The St. Cuthbert Gospel: Studies on the Insular Manuscript of the Gospel of John (BL, Additional MS 89000).
Dickinson, T.M. and Härke, H., 1992. Early Anglo-Saxon Shields (Vol. 110). London: Society of Antiquaries of London.
Dickinson, T.M., 2005. Symbols of protection: The significance of animal-ornamented shields in early Anglo-Saxon England. Medieval Archaeology, 49(1), pp.109-163.
Ellis Davidson, H.R. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe
Evison, V.I., 1963. Sugar-loaf shield bosses. The Antiquaries Journal, 43(1), pp.38-96. 
Fern, C. 2014. "
Dramatic golden fish and eagle: A link to Anglo Saxon kings?", [Online: Video]. History West Midlands, IDM Media production. Youtube.  [URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsYzrmO3jn8 ]​
John Hines., 2013. Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1018290
Mortimer, P., 2011. Woden’s Warriors. Warriors and Warfare in 6th-7th Century Northern.
Stephenson, I.P., 2002. The Anglo-Saxon Shield. Tempus.
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Plant Dyeing: The Dress and the Cloak

31/1/2018

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Although textile remains from the early Anglo-Saxon period are quite rare, painstaking analysis by textile archaeologists including Elizabeth Grace Crowfoot, Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, and Penelope Walton Rogers reveal tantalising glimpses of the surprisingly colourful world of Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age textiles. 

Having explored and experimented with plant-dyes for a number of years, we present here two projects to produce garments of the very brightest colours we could achieve with home grown plant dyes. 
Picture
Picture20/2 worsted wool yarns we have dyed;left to right; woad, woad+weld, weld, weld+madder, and madder.

A wide range of shades, from white through creams to greys and browns, and even black were achievable simply by means of sorting sheep fleece before spinning, or by different retting techniques and sun-bleaching of plant fibres like flax, hemp and nettle-fibre.   
In the Anglo-Saxon period there seems to have been an increase in access to purer white wools, and with it came expansion of potential for bright colours from dyeing using techniques which first began to be practised in North Europe in the late Iron Age.

Many native plants can be used for dyeing yet relatively few specific plant dyes appear in the archaeology; most famously, indigo blue from woad (Isatis tinctoria), luteolin yellow from weld (Reseda luteola) or dyers greenweed (Genista tinctoria), and reddish colours (alazarin) from the roots of various bedstraws including most famously, dyers madder (Rubia tinctorum).   The latter, though popular among the Romans, is peculiarly all but absent from early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, returning tentatively in the 7th century, usually in expensive trim. Other dyes (tannins, lilacs and purples from lichen varieties, and others) were in use, but many secondary colours are possible simply by overdyeing these three principle plant dyes, but also through modification using alternative mordants and additives.  

Plant-dyed cloth has a particular quality in terms of look and lustre that is hard to simulate or even adequately describe, and there is therefore more than just an intangible payoff for living historians pursuing truly plant-dyed costumes. It is further, false to assume that "plant dyed" means "dull", "soft" or "pastel" tones, as the results of successful plant-dyeing can be blindingly bright, though often fading with time. ​ The affinity of light, natural de-greased wool for dyes is quite staggering, and only enhanced by mordants. Plant fibres, on the other hand, do not have a strong affinity for dyes, and at best, plant dyes produce softer hues on them. To what extent the Anglo-Saxons used plant dyes on the likes of linen is a matter of debate; there is next to no evidence of dyed linen in the archaeology, though it could be argued this is an artefact of preservation, with pigments more likely to be retained (to be detected by scientific analysis) in wool, over 1000 years in the earth, compared to linen. 
​
​Over a number of years, our team (members Lindsey and Æd in particular) have been exploring plant-dyeing, experimenting on various scales, with various dyes and recipes, drawing on the advise of a number of more experienced experts. We are particularly indebted to the Mulberry Dyer, Deb Bamford, for her guidance and expertise.    Plant dyeing has a satisfying "alchemical" quality, often involving mysterious colour changes, odd ingredients, and not uncomplicated recipes. 

One of the most ancient, and most famous dye plants, with evocative "magical" associations, woad - a relative of cabbage - works totally differently to other dyes, as the dye chemical from the plant is wholly insoluble. Crushing and simmering of the leaves will simply release the blue powder from the leaves, which will collect in the pan (and can, patiently, be dried, if desired, to be mixed with binding agents to form a paint! Such a paint was used, among other places, in the detailing on the cover of the Stonyhurst / Cuthbert Gospel). The challenge with woad, therefore, is to find a way to dissolve it so that it can soak into the fabric, and here, to the rescue, comes some surprisingly advanced chemistry.
​
PictureFreshly harvested woad (Isatis tinctoria) leaves
What is required is a reducing agent; a chemical which will strip the oxygen from the dye molecules. Through this, the indigotin (insoluble) is converted to indoxyl, which is soluble and can soak into the fabric, although this will rapidly turn back to insoluble indigotin on contact with air. Through this process, temporarily soluble dye can enter the network of fibres which comprise the cloth or yarn, but afterwards transform to insoluble powder within its matrix and, for the most part, cannot wash back out. But what reducing agent? As with so many ancient and medieval crafts and industries, the answer was urine. Specifically the ammonia which is produced by its fermentation. This foul business is the reason dye industries tended, along with tanning, to be banished to the outskirts of medieval and later settlements. 

Though not knowing the actual chemistry underpinning the process​, generations of experimentation and the sharing of expertise would have led to an intuitive understanding of how to achieve good results, and it is interesting to speculate how the process by which these particular leafy greens and stale urine, when associated, can be used for dyeing. Traditional herbalism holds that woad leaves can be used as wound-dressings, and as one of the most ancient "cleaning agents" stale urine may have been used by ancient people to clean wounds. If both were applied together, ancient people may have found that their skin magically turned blue as the dressing was taken off, and through this, would have become aware of this mechanism of dyeing. 

​In practice, at least on a small (bucket with lid) scale, our experience of woad-dyeing with urine was frustrating as well as foul. The fabric would come out of the green vat vaguely pale green, and turn pale blue on contact with air, but weak activity of the reducing agent often meant that it would be wholly used-up reacting with air introduced along with the cloth or yarn, and take a day or two to regenerate.
Picture
Jar containing pure indigo from home-grown woad. This was achieved by simmering the chopped leaves before seiving them out, continually whisking the water, allowing the "blue dust" to settle, syphoning off the water at the top, adding water to wash away other pigments, and repeating.
 It is not a simple case of leaving the fabric in, either, for the ammonia will as readily reduce the dye already in the fabric and allow it to leach out. After days of trying  we managed to get pale and patchy blues on some cloth samples; proof of concept if nothing else.  ​We're confident, or at least are prepared to trust, that a larger, more well fed, and more "mature" vat could easily and reliably produce better colours and on a larger scale, but we are happy to leave this to other intrepid dyers with stronger stomachs. ​

​It should be noted that while the foulness of this business can be washed from the fabric, after the dye has fully oxidised in the air, it may reek again if it gets wet.  Not keen on this prospect at living history events, and wishing to demonstrate the full potential of woad-dyeing, for our exemplar costume item we made a small concession to modern chemistry and used a modern reducing agent (spectralite) to fully reduce the dye, allowing it to dissolve. 
A bolt of fine diamond-twill wool, of a kind frequently preserved on the back of early Anglo-Saxon brooches, was the starting point for a 6th century Anglo-Saxon dress, which was then dipped multiple times into an active woad vat; entering white, absorbing the yellow to green dye, and then spectacularly converting to brilliant blue on contact with air.  Additional, shorter dips (long enough to allow more dye to soak in, but not so long that the dye already locked in would be attacked by the reducing agent) allowed the colour to be made deeper and stronger, and to even out some patchiness. Pale and dark patches occur as the vat typically will have "blooms" of concentrated dye near the surface, while, additionally, in any one dip, it may be difficult to ensure the whole bolt of fabric is fully submerged without trapping bubbles.  Dyeing "in the yarn", however, would mean any variation in shade would even out once it was woven, and it may be that this approach predominated. 
​
We finished the dress with brightly coloured 6th century Snartemo-V-style tabletweave in madder red, weld yellow, and woad-weld green. ​
We were keen to produce another garment that displayed the full potential of madder. The dye in madder (alazarin), like most other plant dyes (but not like woad!) is soluble; steeping the chopped madder roots will release the dye into solution, rather like making tea, and this "tea" will easily soak in (and wash out!) of the fabric. What is required, then, is another chemical to help trap the dye; a mordant. Much is made of the etymology of mordants (related to the French mordere- to bite) but this is unhelpful, for, unless something has gone very wrong, no chemical should "bite" into the fibres. Rather, mordants are soluble (and polar) chemicals which will easily soak into fabric, but have a tendency to "clump" together with dye molecules when they are mixed. The resulting clumps, chains and blobs ("dye complexes") of linked dye and mordant molecules, if formed while inside the network of fibres which make up the yarn or cloth, will be entangled, too big to easily wash out. Thus the dye will stay in place. Because they sit linked up with the dyes, some mordants can modify the resulting colour. 

As previously noted madder-dye is rare in the early Anglo-Saxon archaeological record, and is gradually re-introduced during the 7th century. Its scarcity may at least partly be accounted for by the fact that madder dyeing (more-so than the extremely strong yellow dyes) is particularly reliant on expensive mordants and as the pigment's colour changes with pH, acidic mordants such as natural tannins are not a good choice. 
At least as far back as the medieval period the mordant of choice was potash alum (potassium aluminium sulfate). This mainly Mediterranean-sourced mineral would have been difficult to access in the early Anglo-Saxon period, and it has been suggested locally sourced clubmoss could have been used instead, though this cannot have been sufficient to sustain the late Anglo-Saxon dye industry, which may have returned to the gold standard of mordants; alum. ​​
​Using a large non-reactive vat, a means of maintaining a temperature of roughly 45'C, and a fairly enormous amount of chopped madder root, we dyed a bolt of the very same diamond twill fabric mentioned above. 
Picture
20/2 worsted yarns in a madder dye bath; previously woad-dyed wool (left) and previously undyed wool (right).
Picture
Bolt of diamond twill wool in the bath of madder. The fabric is loosely concertinaed to fit yet allow the dye to circulate fully around all areas. It was also regularly mixed.
​This was first stripped of any grease, soaked in a concentrated mordant vat, and then introduced to the hot dye-bath, where it soaked for 5 days. This duration was not necessary but contributed to the depth of colour. Importantly, because of the slow and gentle "soaking" nature of non-substantive dyes, the fabric took up the colour evenly.  The fabric was removed, dried, washed thoroughly, and dried again. It had shrunk somewhat in the process, possibly due to the heat and duration of the dye process. If repeating, we would likely try a slighly cooler dyebath. 
​
Intended as a cloak, this bolt of wool had its warp ends tied into tassels, while the edges were enhanced with our own woven Snartemo-II tablet-weave, woven with yarns we had previously dyed with woad and weld. 
Wary of piercing this fine fabric, tiny loops in the tablet-weave were integrated as it was stitched on, which provide attachment points for a brooch without pushing a pin through the weave.

Both garments demonstrate the vivid colours available to our ancestors. Having been dyed "in the cloth" the colour is uniform rather than alternating, with the weave pattern only visible as texture. Though it is likely the majority of dyeing was done "in the wool/yarn", colour-patterning so often seen on Anglo-Saxon living historians' costumes is actually rare in the Anglo-Saxon archaeological record, and hardly ever occurs, even in better preserved late Anglo-Saxon textiles.  The look of this wool, with its subtle diamond pattern but single colour, is therefore arguably more representative of these finds. 
References:

Owen-Crocker, G.R., 2004. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England. Boydell Press.

Rogers, P.W., 2007. Cloth and clothing in early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700 (No. 145). Council for British Archeology.

The Mulberry Dyer. [Online] https://www.mulberrydyer.co.uk/
 
​
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Dréamgifu - A 6th century warrior Lyre

5/12/2017

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​In autumn 2017, member Æd Thompson was commissioned by fellow Thegns member Julia to produce a warrior lyre (hearpe) for our mutual friend, Thegns team member and historical musician Connor Sanders. 

This was Æd's first attempt at luthiery, and, we hope, captures the artistry of the the find on which it is based, and will serve to highlight the importance of music and performance in Migration-Age warrior culture, and the way in which our skilled ancestors applied wonderful craftmanship not just to their now much celebrated metalwork, but also to more rarely preserved organic items. 
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The inspiration for this project was the magnificent lyre from Grave 58, Trossingen, Baden-Wuttenberg, South-West Germany, uncovered as part of emergency excavations in winter 2001/2.   During these excavations 12 graves of this late Migration-Age presumed "Alemannic" cemetery were uncovered, of which Grave 58 was the most spectacular; a princely chamber-grave with organic grave-goods remarkably well preserved due to the waterlogging and uniquely heavy clay subsoil. 

Grave 58 contained a man aged around 40 years old who, thanks to dendro-dating of the chamber timbers, we know was buried in the late summer of the year 580 CE.  Strontium isotope analysis revealed he was local to the Trossingen area. He was 1.78m tall and his skeleton showed little signs of physical labour. He lay in a frame bed constructed from beautifully turned beech posts, furnished with red and yellow woollen blankets, and was surrounded by many other sophisticated grave goods, including candle-holders, a turned round table, an elaborate throne, wooden canteen, various bowls, a 3.6m long spear, a bow, a shield of alder, a riding crop and remains of a saddle. A comb lay by his head, a sword (with silver inlaid hilt) lay at his right arm, and at his left was the most perfectly preserved warrior lyre so far discovered.  The overall picture is of a high status princely burial that must inevitably be compared to the likes of Sutton Hoo, Prittlewell and Taplow, though with fewer examples of jewellery, and, instead, a great array of wonderful organic items. Trossingen 58 creates the tantalising possibility that other contemporaneous princely graves may have been as, of not more lavishly furnished with beautifully made organic items (in addition to their preserved metallic finds) which have simply not survived.
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​Prior to the discovery of the Trossingen lyre, it is fair to say that our understanding of Germanic warrior lyres was largely based on ill-preserved fragmentary remains from various contexts, preserved but isolated components, manuscript depictions, conservatism and sensible conjecture.

​Being so wonderfully preserved, Trossingen provides the first evidence for previously unknown features including sound-holes, and elaborate surface decoration beyond anything we could have dared imagine prior to its discovery. Its entire surface was covered with decoration, including friezes of animal interlace, and processions of warriors carrying shields and spears. 
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​Our reconstruction, produced over approximately 6 weeks, is overall faithful to the original, though differing in some aspects to account for material limitations.  The first lyre Æd had ever made, it was produced following detailed instructions and advice from personal communication with experienced lyre-maker Michael J King (www.michaelking.com).

Given difficulty sourcing a large enough piece of Acer campestre wood for the body, we instead used a piece of English lime, having excellent properties for carving and lacking the characteristic "flame" seen on sycamore maple which could obscure the decoration. For the soundboard we sourced a minimally flamed sycamore tonewood (Acer pseudoplatanus - again an appropriate substitute for the original's field maple) though it wasn't quite long enough to allow the sound board to extend all the way up the pillars on the original. We therefore terminated the sound board a few inches lower on the pillars, in a fashion consistent with the design of the remarkably similar contemporaneous lyre from Oberflacht. 

The body of the lyre was cut, the sound-box carved using chisels, scraped out, and then, importantly, the profile of the body was gradually tapered down to be considerably thinner at the at the string arch than at the base, following closely the dimensions of the original.   The sound-board was carefully shaped and sanded, and positioned using ash (Fraxinus excelsior) positioning-pegs as on the original, and finally installed using hot animal-glue.   After a week of drying the outside of the lyre was shaped and sanded. 
The original lyre showed various signs of repair in antiquity, including non-original iron pins used to re-fix the sound board to the body. We chose not to include these so as to give an impression of the lyre when it was first made.  Similarly the original lyre had an unusual mixture of ash and hazel pegs, of different design, and it is suggested that some of these were replacements.  We chose to incorporate a matching set of ash pegs, corresponding to the spoon-shaped design of the original's ash set, whittled by hand and knife.  
The bridge was hand-carved, as the original, out of a piece of willow (Salix spp.).

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​Recreating the elaborate surface decoration took a substantial part of the time spent on this build, and was undertaken closely following the instructions of lyre-maker Michael J King. This unusual technique - "Kolrosing" - is essentially a means of 'tattooing' the wood, leaving decoration which is totally smooth to the touch and does not remove material or alter the surfaces of the instrument, thereby not affecting its sound.
The technique involves finely sanding the surface of the lyre, then incising the design into the surface using a scalpel, in the form of many shallow vertical cuts, removing no material in the process. Charcoal is brushed into these cuts, and the surface is then sealed with an oil or wax and sanded over. 

As this is the only example of such a warrior lyre where the surface of the body was preserved, it opens up the possibility that other lyres were similarly decorated with this technique, although we will never know for certain. The evocative processions of shield-carrying warriors, all with unique faces, reaching for a huge spear, may be a reference to some story or myth in the owner's oral tradition, and may have served as a visual aid for storytelling in the mead-halls of the 6th century.   The decoration on the reverse of the lyre, however - particularly the hugely complex knot work of snakes, must surely be simply an aesthetic indulgence. 

​"Dreamgifu" - meaning "gift of music" in Old English, we hope, helps to illustrate the wonderful craftsmanship that those in what we call the "Early Anglo-Saxon period" applied not just in their now much-celebrated metalwork, but also in organic materials. We hope it also highlights the importance of music and performance in Migration-Age warrior culture. It could not have been a more perfect find to recreate for Connor - combining three of his greatest loves; historic music, tattoos, and snakes. 

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Thegns team member Connor with his lyre "Dreamgifu" - a faithful recreation of the 6th century Trossingen lyre made in autumn 2017 by member Æd Thompson. Photo by Maria Kalinowski.
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A Belt of Gold              (7th century Gold Brocade)

18/8/2016

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Students of "Dark Age" clothing and textiles will surely be familiar with tabletweave - the tightly woven bands used as strong straps and to decorate clothing.  Mineralised remains of textiles with tabletweave structure occasionally show up on the back of brooches, buckles and other metallic items from early Anglo-Saxon graves though it is rare for any fragment to be in sufficiently good condition for any pattern or colours to be inferred.

In the late 6th and early 7th centuries CE, a new variant of tabletweave arrived in Britain from the continent; first via Kent and the South coast before spreading north. This lavish new technique - brocading - involved working additional weft threads through a plain-coloured tabletweave as it was woven, to build up an embroidery-like pattern. This paved the way for the intricade brocades popular in the Viking Age, but brocading in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain began with metallic brocades, where strips of fine metal - almost foil - were worked through the weave to produce shimmering patterns. It is thanks to these metal brocades that we can trace the arrival of the technique, for, unlike normal tabletweave, these metal strips (usually gold), with impressions of the threads impressed into their surfaces, survive our harsh soils.

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The earliest and most abundant examples are narrow bands with simple patterns, from female graves in Kent and the Isle of Wight. These are almost always found near the head, and may have been used as glistening headbands for securing veils. More spectacular are the remains from the famous Taplow princely burial - the second most lavish burial found from the Anglo-Saxon period, which contained, alongside shields, feasting gear and sword, over 2.5m of exquisite, often very wide, finely woven metallic gold brocade.

Due to the shortcomings of the 19th century excavators of the burial, the position of the fine strands of gold found in the burial cannot be stated with any confidence, and as such, we cannot say for certain if the huge amount of gold brocade formed the decoration of a cloak or other garment, or perhaps a sword harness or belt.  The famous gold Taplow buckle had adhesions of both leather and tablet-weave-structure textile on its back, so it may have been associated with the brocade.

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Replica of the buckle from the Taplow princely burial (early 7th century CE)
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Replica, by Aed, of the "narrow band" gold brocade from the Taplow princely burial, early 7th century CE.
To illustrate what such a belt may have looked like, and as part of ongoing efforts to recreate and "bring to life" princely treasures from the 7th century, in 2016 we embarked on a project to build a gold brocaded belt inspired by the Taplow burial. The project began with team member Aed learning the gold brocade technique, first experimenting with a narrow band based on one from Chessel Down, Isle of Wight (in blue, at the top) before moving on to the more complex band from Taplow. The pattern we chose to reproduce is known as the "narrow band" for it is the narrowest element identified from the burial, although it is still wider and more complex than any gold brocade from any other early Anglo-Saxon burial.  The replica band took over 150 hours of high-concentration work.

 Upon completion it was sewn, using the same threads, to a piece of prepared, stained and burnished veg-tan leather, and the buckle and retaining loops were installed, such that the belt could be clasped without the buckle being covered, or the delicate brocading needing to pass through the buckle or be strained. 

Rather than the Taplow buckle (a replica of which we had used on a previous build) we chose to incorporate an exquisite replica of the contemporaneous and similarly styled buckle from Alton, Hampshire, produced by Ganderwick Creations. 

The final result was more subtle than we expected; the gold foil woven through the belt is quite subtle until light hits it at just the right angle and flares, revealing the pattern vividly against the ground weave. It looks particularly good glistening in firelight, and it may have been this that attracted our ancestors to the technique. After all, while coloured tabletweave will appear dull in the dim light of the meadhall, gold brocade glistens and sparkles in light cast by dancing flames.  What better assemblage to, along with replicas of finds such as the Staffordshire Hoard, illustrate that the 7th century really was the "Age of Gold"?
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Átorþorn:  A kingly late 7th century killing-seax

9/3/2016

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During the latter half of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th, as the furnished burial rite was in decline, the elegant narrow-seax was being replaced by a much larger, heavier weapon; the broad-seax. Known examples tend to have fairly simple hilt fittings or seem to lack them completely suggesting that they were either purely organic or had precious components stripped off prior to deposition, as seems to have been done with swords. The Staffordshire Hoard has demonstrated that the abundance of golden-hilted swords during the 7th century was far in excess of what grave evidence had suggested, and it is reasonable to suppose that the same would be true of seaxes. Although many excavated broadseax blades have a brutal magnificence to them, no definitively 'princely' or 'kingly' examples have been found in England, though such weapons likely did exist. It is an interesting exercise to imagine what such items would have looked like.
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Beginning in 2014, we embarked on a project to envision what a complete, kingly-status, large broadseax from the late 7th century would have looked like, drawing on elements from the corpus of English broadseax burials, and taking inspiration from the later phase material from the Staffordshire Hoard.

Our associate specialist weapon-smith Paul Binns (of Paul Binns Swords) produced a blade of extraordinary beauty and breathtaking complexity. This has a slim band of ‘pattern-welding’ sitting below two deep parallel grooves, themselves bearing subtle ribbons of patternation, and a graceful wave-like pattern interface between the blade-core and the carbon-steel cutting edge.
The blade is 48cm long, 4cm wide and 8mm thick at the spine edge. Longer than is typical for a light broad-seax, and a little more slender than is typical for a heavy-broad-seax, this blade arguably falls into the category of “atypical broad-seaxes”; a more elegant form which arguably foreshadowed the advent of the more familiar and fearsome longseaxes of the 8th-10th centuries.
Paul, an artist of iron, relishes interesting projects and the opportunity to push his skills to new limits. I am sure he would not mind me saying that the blade he produced for us was, to a great extent, far more elaborate and impressive than we had really anticipated, and necessitated us re-thinking our original plans in order that the other elements; hilt and sheath, would live up to the magnificence of the blade. It is a nervous and sometimes agonising business, attempting to add to another craftsman's masterpiece, and we only hope we have done it justice.
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​Gilt bronze hilt collars, decorated with filigree work, were custom-made for the blade by our associate historic jeweller George Easton, taking inspiration from a number of items from the Staffordshire Hoard. The hilt was capped with a gilt bronze replica of the pommel-cap STH-K347 made for us specially by Mr Easton for this project.
Although some broad-seaxes, notably those from Northolt Manor and Purton have very long grips of at least 24cm in length, most vary between 10 and 20cm. Taking into account the proportions and balance of the blade we settled on a hilt length of 19cm, with the actual grip (excluding the jewelled elements) measuring 9.5cm, producing a grip comfortably wide enough for one hand. Because of the size of the grip collars, the hilt was made wasp-waisted to some degree with an offset central widening to promote a comfortable grip. The haft was carved in sections from walnut using spacers of black cow-horn.
The result is, expectedly for such a weapon, blade-heavy, but nevertheless comfortable in the hand. Such weapons, and their even more substantial brothers – heavy broadseaxes – seem to have been optimised for heavy chopping blows, and this is no exception.

The thick veg-tanned leather was tooled to a conservative and well evidenced design, featuring lines delineating the shape and fullers of the blade contained within, with other tooled elements having been designed in a manner informed by, and sympathetic to the metallic elements of the sheath. It was lined with fine animal hide to further protect the blade (-an approach more commonly associated with wood-cored sheaths, but nevertheless evidenced having augmented the core-free sheath of the seax from Buttermarket G2297). The sheath was closed using a myriad of tiny copper-alloy pins on the suspension-flap following the style of Buttermarket G1306, and likewise, an L-shaped copper-alloy fitting of U-cross-section was added to the suspension-flap at the mouth of the sheath. Further decoration came from 7 rivets interspersed with 5 larger decorative copper-ally buttons 16mm in diameter showing what at first sight looks to be an abstract chip-carved design but is actually a devolved Salin Style-II picture of what I take to be a raven. Such large decorative rivets are seen on the sheaths of continental large seaxes but are not unknown in England, being found in Buttermarket and the smith’s grave at Tattershall-Thorpe, which was dated to the late 7th century. The buttons and rivets used here, though not precise replicas of either find, mirror their styles and arrangement closely and together, we hope, are highly representative of these overtly Frankish-influenced, highly decorative and wealth-displaying sheaths.

The suspension system relies on two iron three-way strap-dividers and utilises two of the large brass studs to secure the vertical straps. Adjustment is via a small iron buckle on the anterior strap and a larger iron buckle on the breast strap of the baldric. This system produces very comfortable carriage of this big seax with no damaging torsion being placed on the straps.

This is a speculative weapon reconstruction but the sheath and suspension have been kept very disciplined and within what is well-evidenced.

The name we have given to this ‘atypischer Breitsax’ is ‘Átorþorn’, which means ‘poison-thorn’ in Old English. The Anglo-Saxon term ‘þorn’ actually means ‘a sharp point on a stem’ and has always had the associated idea of its causing pain. In Norse poetry the term was sometimes used to describe a jötun. Our blade has the classic seax twist-welded pattern now described as ‘herringbone’ or ‘Anna’ but which was known in Anglo-Saxon times as ‘átertánum fáh’. This meant ‘poison-twig pattern’ and was clearly a kenning for the venomous adder whose markings it resembles. We particularly like the wave-like appearance of the area of the blade which marks where the hard steel edge meets blade core. It is now known that good quality seax-blades did sometimes show this interface which some have likened to the hamon on a Japanese sword.

Having taken well over two years of planning and research, this project has, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, taken copious quantities of ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’. We hope the end result has been a replica seax and sheath worthy of a late c7th king of Mercia, and brought to life what such a weapon assemblage might have looked like at the time of its making.

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Bidford-33:  Another 6th century Anglian Shield

10/8/2015

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The last of our shield reconstructions from the 'productive site' of Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, this project began in summer 2014 following completion of the first reconstruction; that of the princely shield grave-182, and after examining the array of finds from the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Bidford in the keeping of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-on-Avon.

While the reconstruction of the remarkable shield from Bidford grave 182 had been undertaken by Thegns members Aed and  Dr Andrew Thompson, this project was led by member Matt Weaver, with a slightly different aim; to produce a high quality and highly focused reconstruction (using authentic materials and methods where possible) of lessatypical, more broadly representative of 6th century shield finds. 
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Drawing on research for the previous reconstruction (see discussion here), work began with fashioning the board.  Once again, 10-year seasoned ash planks sourced from trees felled less than 14 miles from Bidford were used. While ash sits among less commonly used timbers for Anglo-Saxon shield construction, evidence  from the Tranmer House cemetery suggests that this timber was used preferentially (and even imported from neighboring regions) for high status shield boards, perhaps due to its outstanding toughness, split-resistance and durability compared to wood such as willow, poplar or maple more commonly used for shields.  The toughness of ash surely posed a challenge for shield-makers, being highly resistant to carving, and it is this fact which most likely made other, weaker but more easily worked timbers more widely used.

Planks for the board were laboriously thinned to within a few millimeters of the target thickness, glued together with hot hide-glue, then re-thinned and painstakingly sanded by hand, before being cut to shape and sanded further, with board thickness declining gradually towards the edge which was itself carved thin on the front-face, producing a subtly very slightly convex outer face (yet with flat reverse) corresponding to inferences from cases such as the shield from Sutton-Hoo mound 1.    Unlike the previous reconstruction (Bidford-182) this shield was made larger but thinner, measuring approx 5mm thick at the centre - corresponding to the lower end of estimated shield thicknesses inferred from early Anglo-Saxon finds. Given the greater durability of ash compared to other potential shield woods, but also it's increased density, it is argued that shields made of this material may well have been carved thinner than otherwise to normalize weight without strength being compromised due to the excellent properties of the timber. 
 
Leather was added to the front face with hide glue, with a leather edge stitched in place and hand-burnished. The leather face was treated with natural oils and finally, polished with a protective coating of beeswax.  The grip - corresponding to the extant remains of the type 1b grip from the grave, was formed around an ash core and fixed in place by means of small clench-nails.    The boss - produced by our associate smith closely corresponding to that of the original, was rivetted in place along with two disc fittings and a rare lozenge fitting, in an arrangement based upon the positions of these finds relative to the boss in a photograph of the grave in-situ during excavation in 1923 (see below).  Larger, more elaborate lozenge fittings feature heavily on impressive shields from high status burials of the roughly contemporaneous related east-Swedish Vendel-culture, but all extant Anglo-Saxon examples are smaller, plain, and usually single. The fitting from Bidford grave 33, precisely reproduced here, was the largest found in England at the time of publication of Tania Dickinson's influential synthesis of early Anglo-Saxon shield finds in the 1990s, and is the 'type specimen' for such fittings in England.    Although the purpose of such lozenge fittings is not known, and they may have been purely decorative, it is possible they were added to shields to reinforce observed weaknesses or points of damage. Here, the lozenge has been positioned bracing two of the planks. 

The result - the final in this series, we hope provides a representative impression of what a more typical early Anglo-Saxon shield would have looked and felt like based where possible on evidence from the particular grave in question, and otherwise from understanding of early Anglo-Saxon shields more broadly. It is interesting to note that, despite being of considerably greater diameter than our previous reconstruction of the shield from grave 182 and constructed of precisely the same materials, the modest reduction in board thickness (through reduced thickness of both wood and leather) has led this larger shield to weigh slightly less than its brother.   Members of the public are often surprised by the weight of combat shields, but this reconstruction might demonstrate that Anglo-Saxon shields were perhaps not quite so heavy after all !
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C10th Hamton charter, for St Luke's Church, Cannock

14/7/2015

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The modern town of Cannock sits in an interesting position in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon territory of Mercia, on the important Roman road of Watling Street, and only a few miles from the find-site of the Staffordshire Hoard.  Although the oldest part of the oldest building in the modern town (St Luke's Church) dates to 1100 AD, the parish and its surroundings are steeped in earlier history. 
The Thegns have been proud to be involved, this year, in helping St Luke's Church to communicate and promote Cannock's rich history as part of their 900-year anniversary celebrations. 
As part of this effort, the Thegns were commissioned to produce a special reconstruction to mark the 900 year anniversary. 

Although the earliest mention of the settlement of Cannock, by name, in historical documents appears in the late 11th century Domesday Book (then referred to as 'Chenet') an earlier and extremely locally significant document makes explicit and detailed reference to the area.     Charter S1380 marks the transfer of a large area of land from Lady Wulfrun (earlier granted to her from a pre-existing royal estate) to the church at Hamton (now Wolverhampton) in the late 10th century.  

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Witness list on the reconstructed charter (click to enlarge).
In this charter, the parishes which were transferred were first listed, and then their boundaries were described in detail.  One of these parishes; Hagethorndune (Hawthorn Hill, now Hatherton) almost certainly included the area of the modern town of Cannock. 
This important piece of local history was chosen to be reproduced for St Luke's by the skilled hand of  Thegns-of-Mercia and English Companions member Harry Ball; a specialist in Anglo-Saxon texts and their reproduction with authentic techniques.

Although the charter's authenticity has been questioned, it does refer to a real event, and the boundaries described are from a genuine pre-Conquest survey.    However, as the form in which the text comes down to us is itself a copy-of-a-copy (produced by the 17th century antiquarian Dugdale) the original form of the charter is not known.   
With reference to other, more provenanced charters (including, in particular, the contemporary charter S878 for nearby Abbots Bromley) Harry has reproduced the relevant parts of the charter (the overview, description of the bounds of the Hatherton parish, and the witness list) in insular minuscule script handwritten by quill on high-quality sheepskin parchment, producing a result close to how the original may have looked when it was first produced. 
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It is hoped that this reproduction will raise awareness of the detailed local history of the area dating back to the latter parts of the Anglo-Saxon period.  While the introduction to the charter mentions nearby town names including Bilston, Willenhall, and, significantly, Ogley (Hay) where the famous Staffordshire Hoard was found, the more detailed parish-boundary description for Hatherton contains a wealth of detail about the landscape which local people may still be able to recognise.   Finally, the detailed witness-list (including Æthelred, king of the English, and each archbishop and senior bishop in Anglo-Saxon England at the time) highlights that in the 10th century, this land transfer was sufficiently significant for the most important folk in the land to take an interest in the Cannock area.  

It is fortuitous, to say the least, that our ancestors chose to write their records on a material which if properly prepared and treated well can last over a thousand years, and therefore that these important pieces of local history have not been lost.     There is no reason why this reconstruction might not last equally long, and we hope that, in the keeping of Cannock's central church and oldest historic building, it might serve to help future Cannock residents feel connected with their area's rich heritage. 
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Reconstructed 10th century charter for Hatherton, produced for St Luke's Church, Cannock, by Thegns of Mercia member Harry Ball. (Click to enlarge)
In Christ.    This be the land boundary that Wulfrun has done into the minster of Hamton*, and the town names that this privilege about speaks.   First from Arley and Ashwood and Bilston and Willenhall and Wednesfield and Pelsall and Ogley** and Hilton and Hatherton and Kinvaston and the other Hilton and Featherstone. 

This is the boundary of Hatherton.  First from Sarebrook ford on to the hollow way, and from the way onto the long street***, and from the street to the boundary hedge ford.  Along hedge to three boundaries, and from three boundaries to Ethelwey's hedge on to the open field on to the low and thence to the ditch at the shaw, along ditches at the valley against the mast oak. Along the valley, up on the river and eastward to the valley, after the valley on to the white stanes.  And then on the street that shoots from the miry place, along the street by the enclosure hedge.   After the street in to the white ditch, after the ditch on to the white nook, and there on to the brook.    Along the brook and then in Sarebrook even further along the brook again to the ford, which hither from went. 
(Witnessed by)

+ I, Ætheldred king of the English
+I, Sigeric archbishop of the church at Canterbury
+I, Eadulf archbishop of the church at York
+I, Ealfstan bishop of the church at London
+I, Alfeah bishop of the church at Winchester
+I, Wulfsige bishop of the church at Sherbourne


+ I Ealfwold bishop of the church at Crediton
+ I Sigegar bishop of the church at Wells
+ I Eswi bishop of the church at Dorchester
+ I, Ealfeah bishop of the church at Lichfield
+ I, Hathulf bishop of the church at Hereford
+ I, Godwin bishop of the church at Rochester
And many good men also with these both ecclesiastics and laymen.  ****
*Hamton - Settlement which at some time after this land transfer became known as "Wulfrun's Hamton" and today known as Wolverhampton.
** Ogley - Now known as Ogley Hay -nearest known settlement from Anglo-Saxon times to the find-site of the 7th century Staffordshire Hoard.
*** Long Street - Phrase usually used in relation to old Roman roads, and in this case almost certainly referring to Watling Street, now the A5.
**** The copy of the charter from which this replica is based included a further 26 additional witness names, which are glossed here using this familiar phrase borrowed from charter S1459. 
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A Shield for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

1/11/2014

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Following the success of the previous project to reconstruct the famous 6th century shield from Bidford-on-Avon grave-182 with the kind help of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, we were honoured to be asked by the Trust to produce for them a reconstruction of a 6th shield to be shown to visiting school groups, alongside the original finds in their collection vaults, as part of their educational programme in support of teaching for the new national curriculum.   

Although simplifying some aspects of the construction to maximize durability and keep costs for the Trust low, we were pleased to be able to produce a  satisfying result; a highly durable but convincing reconstruction with details linking directly to items in the collection and drawing particular inspiration from Bidford-on-Avon graves 33 and 182. 
A size of approximately 60cm in diameter was chosen; a reasonable size to be handled by pupils in the target agegroup, close to the modal size for 6th century Anglo-Saxon shields, and also fitting comfortably in the upper half of the "medium shield" category (Dickinson and Härke, 1992). Key details of interest which were integrated into the reconstruction included a boss hand forged by our associate smith corresponding to the form of the well preserved boss from grave 33, in the SBT collection, with rivets capped with pure tin achieving a similar look to those of the boss from grave 182, tinned board disc fittings like those of grave 33, an iron lozenge fitting corresponding to the type specimen from grave 33, and a type 1a(i) grip. 

On completion of the project, three members of the Thegns of Mercia were pleased to be warmly welcomed to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon to present the reconstructed shield to staff in person. It is hoped that this shield, displayed alongside matching finds in the collection, will help to bring the Anglo-Saxon age to life in the minds of visiting school pupils, inspire learning about the period, and encourage pupils to consider various basic aspects of interpretation of archaeology. 
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Bidford-182 :  A princely 6th century Anglian shield

11/9/2014

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In 1923-4, the participants in an excavation of a large mixed-rite early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Bidford-on-Avon uncovered a unique warrior grave. While items such as a bronze hanging bowl indicated the individual's high status, it was the remains of a shield which caught most attention. The boss, uniquely, had been augmented with elaborate animal-style fittings in gilded copper alloy, coexisting with tinned or silvered rivet caps. Few parallels exist, to this day, of the shield of Bidford-182, which remains one of the most elaborately decorated bosses in England's archaeological record. 
Despite the impressive nature of Bidford-182, the find is not well known, and not on public display. Instead the now delicate remains sit in the careful keeping of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.  

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With the kind help of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, over 2013-14 we researched the find and attempted a convincing reconstruction with the help of our associate craftspeople, hoping to recreate what the shield may have looked like when new, and with the intention to raise awareness of this important Midlands find. 

The effort began with substantial research; first to track the find down, and then to explore its context. With Bidford-182 sitting in the "borderlands" between the Wessex-influenced upper Thames valley region and the tribal regions that would later form Mercia, it was particularly important to investigate the affinities of the Bidford finds, and the items from grave 182 in particular. Before recreating the artistic elements, it was also worthwhile exploring their meanings. (Our discussion on the cemetery, its finds, affinities, and the meaning of the 182 shield art can be seen here). 

A shield boss closely matching the dimensions of the original was commissioned from our associate smith, while replicas of the decorative gilded copper-alloy fittings were commissioned from our associate historic jeweller. It was necessary to be extremely precise with these items so as to ensure that the gently curving fittings would, in shape, to the sweep of the boss flange. Our jeweler was also able to produce gilded disc fittings corresponding to the reported measurements of the originals. 

The board was constructed by Thegns members Dr Andrew Thompson and Æd Thompson, using 10-year seasoned ash which had been cut from trees felled less than 14 miles from Bidford-on-Avon itself. The board planks were thinned using authentic adzes and chisels to an appropriate thickness, then glued together using hot animal-glue, producing strong bonds between the plank edges. (More detail on the reconstruction here).  With no evidence to infer the size of the board of the Bidford-182 shield, a diameter of 68cm was chosen, taking into account inferences from neighboring finds. 

The board was then covered with oak-tanned leather, fixed in place using hot animal glue, while an edge, again of oak-tanned leather was sewn in place through pre-drilled holes with strong linen thread. The leather was then treated with a beeswax and oil mixture, applied warm and with considerable polishing, to achieve a rich, water-resistant and scratch-resistant finish.  Meanwhile, a grip had been prepared (Dickinson and Harke type 1a(I) ) corresponding closely to the degraded remains of the original. This was fixed in place using soft iron clench-nails (again corresponding to extant remains) atop a wooden component continuous with the boards themselves, then bound with thin calf-skin for added comfort - a technique well evidenced from other 6th century finds.   Although previously skeptical about the security of this rather simple type of shield grip (and preferring the common and more sophisticated type 1b) we found the result to be both surprisingly sturdy and comfortable. 

Following installation of the decorative pieces, the boss was installed using soft iron rivets peened onto roves on the reverse, while, for security, the decorative disc fittings on the board were attached in a similar manner. The shield boss rivets themselves were capped, prior to installation, with tin, as the originals had been, resulting in an impressive juxtaposition of black iron, gold mounts and silver-coloured rivet caps. 

The result, we hope, reflects well what the original shield may have looked like before deposition at some time in the 6th century, with the elements available for study effectively recreated, and conservative choices made with respect to aspects which could not be inferred from the archaeology. 
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