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?

How did folk in early medieval lowland Britain spend the coldest and darkest time of the year?  What evidence do we have for their midwinter traditions, how did they change and evolve during the period, and have any survived to influence our own festive traditions today?

In preparation for a special midwinter event and seasonal exhibition at the most famous early Anglo-Saxon archaeological site - Sutton Hoo, and building on an earlier article on this subject published in 2012, we embarked on a project to re-examine the evidence for Anglo-Saxon midwinter traditions.  Though noting the existence of a well established image of a generalized early medieval Yule based on passed-down folk traditions and logical inferences is held dear by many people today, we found that many traditions assumed to be Anglo-Saxon in origin are absent from primary sources from the period and are first documented surprisingly late. On the other hand, we found evidence for surprisingly familiar traditions established during the Anglo-Saxon period which can be thought of as distant ancestors of aspects of modern Christmas we still observe today.
So don your warmest cloak, grab a horn-full of mead, and join us on a journey through time, back to the Anglo-Saxon midwinter festival known as Yule.