Early Anglo-Saxon sword blades are increasingly recognised as magnificent works of historic smithcraft. Usually found in horrendous states of preservation, their artistry can be revealed through x-radiography and metallography, then brought to life by painstaking reconstruction by historic bladesmiths. Handling of such replicas in turn has led to commentary on the handling characteristics of these weapons, providing inferences about the early medieval battlefield. However while we can be confident about the length, width, approximate shape, and construction of such blades, critical data concerning thickness of blades is lacking, in turn casting doubt upon the weight, balance and handling of these weapons.  Precisely how thick - and therefore, heavy, were early Anglo-Saxon swords?

​​This article is part of a series about our increasing understanding of the meanings behind the designs of Anglo-Saxon art. For other chapters click here.

​​Secrets in the Stones: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Art. Part 4
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The Garnet Code

​Early Anglo-Saxon jewellery is renowned for its use of gold and garnet work. Until now, the significance of garnets as a material has not been thoroughly investigated. In this article, and a public lecture at Soulton Hall, Shropshire (delivered simultaneously with this article’s timed release) James D. Wenn draws together the geometry of the garnet crystal with the geometry within Anglo-Saxon art and architecture, signposting to the previous articles in this series. This is then coupled with later examples of this geometry, notably the Cosmati Pavement in Westminster Abbey, to link the philosophical meaning of this geometry to Plato’s book ‘Timaeus’, and both pre-Christian and Christian cosmology and theology.​

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.