The approaching coronation of King Charles III represents a chain of similar coronation or consecration rites of monarchs in Britain reaching back at least 1000 years. The precise origins of many of these rites have been lost to time. 
​
Over all though, with the history of the English monarchy often presented as beginning with William the Conqueror's coronation on Christmas Day 1066 at Westminster Abbey, it's easy to imagine Britain's deeper history is not represented in the ceremony. In fact, although less obvious than later medieval elements, there are significant parts of the  coronation rite which reach back to, or attempt to reach out to (widest sense) Anglo-Saxon history. 
​

A gold-and-garnet pommel from the Staffordshire Hoard, which once adorned the jewelled hilt of the sword of an early Anglo-Saxon prince or king, shows what appear to be vaults or arches beneath 'triangular pediments', hiding in the patterns of its garnets. 

Once dismissed as an imaginative vision of the architecture of Rome by a culture whose architecture was limited to wooden huts and halls, new analysis we present here supports a radically different interpretation: that the pommel is a precise representation of a sophisticated and uniquely 'Anglo-Saxon' building, made decades or even centuries before such structures were previously thought to exist. 
Could this sword mount provide the earliest glimpses of a lost Anglo-Saxon temple?

Although most swords from early Anglo-Saxon burials had relatively simple, entirely or largely organic hilts, more elaborate early Anglo-Saxon swords, as well as those of similar designs from related cultures in Migration Period and Early Medieval Europe and 'pre-Viking' Scandinavia, had hilts assembled from many different components.
 
The Staffordshire Hoard, discovered in 2009, contains the remains of between 80 and 150 bejewelled sword hilts, all having been ripped from their original blades. It can be difficult to keep track of the terms for all these various components, and how they relate to each-other. To reduce confusion when discussing Anglo-Saxon sword parts, we've prepared this illustrated guide, to help. 

Compared to the famous shield from Sutton Hoo Mound 1, the shields from the other treasure-filled princely Anglo-Saxon burials lack ostentatious decorative fittings. In the first chapter (link) we discussed the striking similarity of these shields, which appeared to be high-performance gear for warrior princes, optimised for agility rather than ostentation. In the second chapter (link) we reported on our project to produce an authentic replica of such a shield, and explore just how light weight they could have been.