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Two or More Objects Meet in a Hoard - Trowel 22
465 Plays5 months ago
It’s part two of a discussion all about hoards! Ash and Tilly are joined by Dr Adrián Maldonado in their quest to identify a hoard of objects recently stumbled across in the middle of the redevelopment of Khazad-dûm. But how do you identify a hoard? What kind of research can be done on them? Are were Viking silver rings just a medieval form of friendship bracelet? Listen it to find out!
Links
- Almost Archaeology blog
- Almost Archaeology twitter
- Staffordshire Hoard
- Introduction chapter (2016) “Creating Material Worlds”
- Dragon hoard article (2015): “Hoards and Sinuous Snakes”
Contact
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @and.my.trowel
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/trowel/22
ArchPodNet
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You have my sword. And you have my boat. And my trowel.
Episode Introduction
00:00:11
Speaker
Hi, you're listening to episode 22 of And My Trowel, where we look at the fantastic side of archaeology and the archaeological side of fantasy. I'm Ash. And I'm Tilly. And welcome back to the second part of our discussion with Dr. Adrian Maldonado. Adrian, say hello. Hi. Can we try that one again? guys Rachel, feel free to either keep that in or cut it out, whatever you think. Yeah, that was quite funny to be fair. I'll do it again. Hey, hello. dr andrew um
00:00:46
Speaker
but you OK, and welcome back to the second part of a discussion with
Thor's Descendants & Their Hoard
00:00:50
Speaker
Dr. Adrian Maldonado. Hello. If you haven't joined us for part one, we recommend you go back and have a listen. But just to recap here, we've been tasked with the descendants of Thor and the Third to help them identify a horde of objects they recently stumbled across in the middle of their redevelopment. They really don't know what to do with it, and so they want us to help them figure out what it is, who it belongs to maybe, and what they should do with it. But come on, surely it's easy.
00:01:16
Speaker
has to be a dragon's horde.
Fantasy Creatures and Their Hordes
00:01:19
Speaker
Wait, does it? I think there's more creatures in fantasy context that have hordes other than dragons. Oh, yeah, okay, I suppose so. Well, I mean, luckily for us, what has happened to us in the break? My goodness. It was all going so well. Right? Oh, man. we got We got casual. Not casual. Lazy? I don't know. Anyway, right. Oh, yeah. OK, I suppose you're right. Well, luckily for us, we have Adrian on our team. So, OK, dragons, I guess, is the first thing that comes to mind. But as we said in the last episode, you always think Vikings when you think of hordes, you think dragons when you think of hordes. But are there any other types of horde in fantasy fiction? What do you think, Adrian?
00:01:57
Speaker
Absolutely. I think all kinds of creatures have their own collections and their own stashes of objects. You know, you pick any kind of legendary world and you can see that there's human hordes, there's dwarf hordes, there's other kinds of stashes of stuff. And so I think, ah you know, dragons are a very evocative part of the fantasy literature, but no, we don't have to limit ourselves here, do we? No, I don't think so at all, not at all. And then often you find that the hordes of the creatures that you find in the you know fantasy context, they are being, like you said, the hordes of man or the hordes of humans first, and then they've sort of taken them and then stashed them away. True, yes. Like a creature has always stolen from humans and then like hoarded something. Are there any examples actually in fantasy fiction of creatures that have created objects and then hoarded them? There's a good question. Yeah, something we should definitely look into. I mean, the dwarves have their own stashes very famously of treasure that they sit on. And that's the dragons come to dwarf kingdoms basically to sit on their existing treasure hordes.
Dragons and Treasure Myths
00:03:10
Speaker
Which why is that? Why why do dragons are they so attracted to hordes?
00:03:16
Speaker
This is one of these things that is kind of cross-cultural, and it's become, I think, most strongly associated, at least in the sort of Anglophone world, it's become most strongly associated with the quote-unquote Germanic traditions. That is, early English and Old Norse mythology has these very evocative stories which still survive, don't they? These are the sort of Viking sagas, Beowulf, other sort of literary and poetic stories. true. I remember ba we read Beowulf actually. Yeah, we did. It was an archaeo book club. and Which was great because it was translated into like modern slang. So it was like, yo bro, mariaan do you even lift? Maria Dvana Henley was the translator, the author. She did a fantastic job. It was hilarious. So like talking about the dragon and stuff like that, it was all funny. It was all like, yo bro, who's the
00:04:08
Speaker
It was great. So instead if it was like hark or something every time in the Anglo-Saxon poem, it would be yo. Yeah, it was good. But yeah, you see that in a lot of Germanic myths, like you said, and like I think of Fanier who was slain by a secret, and he became a worm because he kills his father and then steals his hoard of treasure, which was meant to be given to Odin as a weregild. So it's kind of like, Greed is some part of the myth and the trope of dragons. They don't really have a function to have treasure. What would they use it for? it's just to have It's literally just to have it, isn't it? Yeah, they can't wear it, they can't spend it, they can't process it. So they just sit on it like Smaug and be happy, like treasure bed.
00:04:55
Speaker
And, you know, what other book happens to feature a dragon sitting on... Oh God, no, I have no idea, Telly, please tell me. There's this book, there's this author, I don't know if you've heard of him, Terry Pratchett, who...
Terry Pratchett's Dragon Hoards
00:05:08
Speaker
Oh, no, Terry Pratchett, sorry, Terry Pratchett, I must have mispronounced that. um One of my absolute favorite in the series is called Guards Guards and it's the first one in the Guards sub-series which is my favorite sub-series as well and it's all about a dragon coming and then at some point indeed it's sitting on the treasure and they're all talking about how it has no need for the treasure. So there you go, there's also a dragon sitting on a hoard of treasure in Terry Pratchett.
00:05:31
Speaker
There you go. Are you happy now? I actually thought you said, have you heard of a man named? That's definitely what I heard. I didn't want to call it out. Oh, I should have done that. Let's pretend I did. Let's pretend I would have made that clever enough pun.
Middle-earth Hordes
00:05:49
Speaker
But there's different types of creatures, surely not just dragons, right? So, Adrian, as our as our Lord of the Rings aficionado, we've mentioned the dwarves already. What other kind of hordes are there, for example, in in Middle-earth? We mentioned the sort of dwarf hordes, which then become the dragon hordes, usually. But there's other creatures, there's other peoples in in Middle-earth. and One of my favorites, actually, and this is something that comes outside of the the sort of canonical Lord of the Rings series is actually in the Unfinished Tales, but we get this amazing story buried in the Unfinished Tales after that. These are the kind of things that were published posthumously cobbled together from Tolkien's own notes, but it looks like at certain points he starts writing the story of what happened after the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you know, and he follows the adventures of Aragorn and Gimli and everybody else as they kind of clean up the mess left by Sauron. And one of the most amazing things is that they find their way into Saruman's old tower or thank. And, you know, Saruman is long gone by this point. So they are taking it back. I guess they're renovating it for the men of Rohan to use again, who knows? But in doing so, they come to Saruman's chamber and they figure out, they find by some way or another that there's secret compartment in Saruman's private chambers and they go in there. And they open up the doors and they realize that he's got like this little museum display just for himself, I guess. And in there, there's like a gold diadem. You know, this is like not a tiara, but the kind of the very delicate kind of metal crown that that you see Aragorn wear. And this is the traditional sort of crown of of the men of Gondor. Right? And and so there's a diadem in there, and there's a chain and a couple of other things, and they deduce that this is actually the personal effects of Isildur, who was killed trying to flee while wearing the one ring. And then when he dies in the river, dies in the river Anduin, and then the ring falls off of his finger, and it sort of rolls around in the river for however many thousand years until it is found later on by Gollum, or by Smeagol, who would become Gollum.
00:08:05
Speaker
Okay, but nobody ever
Saruman's Archaeological Quest
00:08:06
Speaker
knew where Isildur was actually killed. Everybody knew the story. He was shot in the back by orcs, presumably, and he dies. It drowns in the river. But nobody knew where it happened. And Saruman, and being a wizard, he is trying to find the ring before Sauron does, but he he becomes obsessed in his quest. And he is absolutely using all the techniques that he can. He's doing genuine field work, you guys. I was about to say, this sounds like an antiquarian.
00:08:39
Speaker
ah And we don't know exactly how he does it, but at a certain point, you know, he does it. He finds the final resting place, presumably the skeleton of Isildur, because he has his diadem and his chain, the chain around which he would wear the the one ring around his neck when he didn't have it on. And so Saruman, strangely enough, seems to be maybe the best archaeologist in Middle-earth. Who knew that Zarma would be a fantasy archaeologist? That's right. And so he never actually found the ring, but he got as close as anybody else did in Middle Earth. So he had this little mini kind of hoard, I suppose, of his own in Orthanc, in his own private chamber. But it was a little secret stash, that one. I smell a new episode. Yeah, right? The original, like, what's it called? The Cabinet of Curiosities. so Yeah.
00:09:34
Speaker
sort of you know the the other The other famous hoard, I suppose, in
Bilbo's Troll Hoard Discovery
00:09:38
Speaker
it comes in the Hobbit story, and that's the the troll hoard in in the the chapter called Roast Mutton, where they encounter the trolls. Then they trick the trolls into becoming stone and to waiting for the sun to come up. And then they turn to stone and then they find Bilbo has stolen the key from one of their pockets. And so they find the entrance to their troll cave. And in their troll cave, there's all sorts of odds and ends. There's the clothing of various victims piled up. There's food and bones, and it's quite messy. But they also have hoarded stuff, odds and ends. They describe it as brass buttons and even pots of gold. But most consequentially, they also find a stash of swords of various kinds.
00:10:22
Speaker
in one corner of their their cave. And of course, two of these swords are apparently quite famous swords from the first stage of Middle-earth, and ah made by the Elves, one of them wielded by the King of Gondolin himself. And ah Bilbo Baggins takes a little tiny dagger from the collection, but Gandalf takes the biggest and nicest ones of these. Turns out that this is the one that belonged to the King. yeah gandal thats right But I mean Gandalf, I mean, you know, not a stitch on Saruman's knowledge here. It's got to be said because he picks up these swords and he says, well, they look quite nice and they have runes on them. But sadly, I can't text yeah he says he says oh i can't read these runes, but I know somebody who does. And so they take them to Rivendell and it's Elrond the elf who actually knows how to read the runes. So Gandalf, you know, he didn't know the answers, but he knew who to ask. So I guess that's a good thing. as well. Yeah, that's also, for well, you know, we we asked you, right, so I guess we're the same. In that respect, you're our Elrond. I'll that as a compliment.
00:11:32
Speaker
and So are these objects objects of meaning and significance to the trolls? So like, not even the swords, but like, you know, the brass buttons and the pots of gold and the things that they've kind of collected, is that Do you think that's of significance to them in this world? I think Tolkien is kind of applying a sort of moral judgment here. They're just picking up things at random and they don't know what they are. And so there's old swords next to, you know, commonplace everyday swords and daggers, you know, so they have these two amazing, quite famous, you know, actual priceless antiquities, but they're just piled up in the corner alongside all the other junk like brass buttons, you know, so they don't know what they're doing.
00:12:13
Speaker
So the trolls are just kind of magpie-like magpie-like gathering things around. And this is usually how hordes are depicted in fantasy books, really. They're just sort of either big piles of treasure, just kind of generic gold and silver coins and that, or they're piles of things that people don't recognize as having anything of value until somebody with knowledge identifies it. as this this one thing. So hordes in fantasy fiction just kind of become the the sort of deus ex machina, the the kind of the device to reveal your preferred MacGuffin.
00:12:46
Speaker
like Yeah, that makes sense. that makes sense So is there a way that archaeological hordes and fantasy hordes sort of meet in the middle and come together? Great
Archaeology Meets Fantasy
00:12:55
Speaker
question. There's this article that I absolutely love. It's by an expert in Viking silver hordes and specifically the hordes on the island of Gotland in the Baltic. This is Christoph Kilger and he he wrote an article a few years back about that mythological theme or trope of a dragon or a snake or a worm guarding and protecting a horde. And what I love about this is that he actually finds an archaeological correlate for this in the Viking Age hordes of Gotland.
00:13:26
Speaker
So one of the things that you find over and over again that is showing up in Viking Age hordes is things that are in ring shapes, whether that's arm rings or neck rings. That's the most common type of object that's found in Viking Age silver hordes. And they come in various kind of shapes. But he he pinpoints several of these things that actually take on the look of snakes, whether it's the pattern of stamps kind of becoming the patterns on the backs of serpents. or sometimes physically spiral coiled rings with beast heads, almost like a snake with two heads kind of thing. And so he's linking this back to the, you know, Old Norse mythology and saying, well, it's not just a fantastical thing. And it's not something that maybe is written into these stories later. You know, the Beowulf and the sagas, they all come to us in later versions, you know, from a Christian world, writing these things down and looking back into the pagan past.
00:14:27
Speaker
He's saying actually this is good evidence that they actually did believe that treasure and snakes and dragons go together. And he he points out to a couple of hordes that have been well excavated enough on the island of Gotland where you have a stash of silver and placed at the top of the horde one of these rings. that has that serpent-like form or decoration, almost as if they have protected their hoard by adding a silver object that stands in for a dragon. So it's actually the dragon being put to use as a kind of spell, a protective spell over that hoard. So it's just, if that kind of holds up, then suddenly you have this whole new layer of understanding of your hordes.
00:15:14
Speaker
and and And genuinely, we do. I've i've read this article and I've looked back at a lot of hordes. And we do often have hordes which are just basically silver and gold treasure and one random object. added in. And so the Galloway hoard that we're studying has all this gold and silver, but near the very top of the hoard, almost the the last thing that was put into the ground was this beautiful silver cross. And we are in a sort of Christian time period here. And so is that cross at the top of this hoard acting in a similar way to kind of protect everything below? And the more you look, the more you find these hordes with just one weird object that kind of stands out, an object that isn't silver. or isn't precious metal at all. So we have this one fantastic hoard from the Northern Isles of Scotland called the St. Ninian's Isle Hoard, buried around the start of the Viking Age. And it's silver brooches, silver bowls, silver bits of swords scabbered in hilts, you know, the usual treasure, but it's deposited inside of a church. And there's this one weird thing in that hoard, which is the jawbone of a porpoise.
00:16:19
Speaker
And it's included in this box with all the rest of the silver stuff. In fact, it stained from this sort of contact that it had with the metal over the last thousand years. You know, so it was deliberately deposited, but nobody knows why in this massive treasure hoard, there's the jawbone of a porpoise, but it must have had some kind of significance. You know, is it a relic of some sort? Did it relate to a story of the foundation of the church or a story that they told about the saint that the church was dedicated to? Who knows? But it could be that, you know, behind our hordes, even in this Christian period, there's another layer of maybe, I don't know, you can call it maybe magic.
00:17:02
Speaker
Oh, I like that a lot. And I suppose that sort of, it sort of relates to the later poetry and poems that you get where you get these worms and these dragons looking after treasure. That's why they're there. They're protecting it in and that sort of way. So that really does fit quite well. Yeah. And it's only looking back from that Christian perspective that we start to say these dragons are demonic and scary and horrible. But maybe, you know, in the early medieval period, it was more of a protective spirit rather than a scary spirit. Or to put it another way, I guess it was scary, but on your behalf to scare others off and protect what was yours. So you had a dragon on your side. That's good to have. God dragon. Tilly, that better not be that cauldron bubbling over again. Those carpets won't survive another eye of newt disaster. No, it's definitely not the cauldron. Well, I'll just go and check. We'll be right back, everyone.
00:18:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Am My Trial. The cauldron luckily didn't bubble over, telly so we can continue. yeah So, sorry, Adrian, where were we could you tell us maybe then a little bit more, we were already talking about then that kind of intersection between archaeology and fantasy and how you can see fantasy elements maybe in the archaeology, but how can you see the archaeological elements in this fantasy situation? So, in terms of hordes, for example, I'm just going to quickly go back to the points that you made in the last episode, um in case people have forgotten. So, if I remember correctly, a horde has to be two or more objects,
00:18:36
Speaker
It has to be in the ground, or at least somewhere where it's not intended to be retrieved. It's usually made up of objects that are considered representative of a different sort of person or culture, and there's sort of all kinds of different things associated with it. So how would you actually go about analyzing a horde? So how do you identify them, first of all? I think you know with any hoard, what you want to do is throw as many of your archaeological tools at it. And we don't always have you know we don't always have the opportunity. But it sounds like the case that you're working on, they've done
Analyzing Hoards
00:19:11
Speaker
the right thing. That is, they've stumbled upon something. They didn't quite understand it, but they saw it as relevant. And they've contacted some archaeological experts, such as yourselves. So I think that's a really good way to start.
00:19:24
Speaker
They've sent you some drawings. I think what you'd want to do really is investigate the context. As I say, context is everything. What do we know about that chamber that it was found? You know, you'd want to kind of find out when was it last used? When was this last opened? And in order to do that, You really want to excavate very carefully and record everything as you go. But what are we looking for? You're looking for what was there at the time the hoard was deposited. Is there a house? Is it out in the middle of nowhere? is it sort of Was it underwater at a certain point? Was it always on dry land? Is it in the wall or the floor of a building? Those are the kinds of things that begin to tell you what this actually is.
00:20:10
Speaker
But then you're also looking at any evidence that you can of how they put it in the ground, how they deposited this, and this is really crucial. Most hordes are not going to be just a pit dug into the ground with everything shoved in you'll find that actually with most archaeological hordes there is a structure to them they've selected a certain kind of object or certain types of objects and sometimes they've even placed them like in little parcels within the bigger hoard and so is there any evidence of wrapping is there any evidence of containers because that's the kind of thing that begins to tell you is this the treasure or is this something belonging to one person or a group of people. There's a really famous example from, again, from from from early medieval England called the Staffordshire Horde, deposited in the eighth century. And what it is, is gold and silver objects mainly relating to weapons. So not the swords themselves, but the gold and silver, hilts and scabbards and all sorts of other warrior a gear, and really famously now a helmet that they've kind of torn apart. And all of these weapons, because they're they're sort of
00:21:24
Speaker
They've been broken down to their sort of precious metal only. The interpretation is that this is a trophy horde. This is the, the sort of the treasure and the arms and armor specifically of a defeated army that they've, you know, they've bent their swords, they've broken their weapons and they've gathered them all together and they've deposited them here. So gathering them as a trophy of a defeated army is one thing, but then why they ended up in the ground. is something else. And so that intentionality is what you want to retrieve. And the only way to do that is to see, is there any structure to what you've got? Are there parcels? Has this been laid down carefully? And yeah, what was there at the time it was buried?
00:22:04
Speaker
that's a really cool example. That actually reminds me, and I i wonder, you maybe you know this because I remember vaguely reading about it years and years and years ago, and I can't remember what it was in relation to, was they had found broken, indeed it was weapons, it was bows and arrows, and it was swords in various different pockets that had been deposited, and they were broken. And the theory was that it was because it everything was reversed in the afterlife, so then you had to break the weapon and the objects before you. Is this something that I'm misremembering? Is is this something that exists somewhere? Wow, absolutely. Well, i I mean, there's a lot of echoes in in in that in the kind of the period that I study. There's a couple of examples, more than a couple, of there's examples of Viking graves, that is sort of graves in that Scandinavian tradition, where usually a man is buried with several weapons, a woman is buried with lots of jewelry, and then there's other things that get put into these graves as well. We call them grave goods. But in some cases, and especially with cremation rituals, they've also sort of bent the swords or smashed the shield. And so you can see the shield boss has been absolutely hammered multiple times. And it's not because they've been destroyed in battle. They very carefully, quote unquote, killed these weapons as part of the funerary ritual. ritual. wo Sorry. Oh I didn't even realise I was doing it. We led you to it, it's fine. Yeah, it was a trap. But no, that's fascinating that is that you have to kill the object in order to send it with someone into the next life.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, and there's ah there's one saga, one Icelandic saga. It gets used over and over again. And I know colleagues of mine who are sick to death of hearing about it. But there's the Yinglinga saga, which again, is is written in Iceland in the 13th century, but presumably based on older, potentially pagan stories. And it's Odin who is, you know, ah basically the big man amongst the sort of Old Norse deities. Odin suggests that when you die, you have to put stuff into the ground, because anything that you put in the ground in your life, you'll be able to retrieve in the afterlife. Valhalla, as it were. And it's been called Odin's law. But the you know the scholars that have a problem with this, they say that this is the only saga it which mentions anything about
00:24:26
Speaker
burying treasure and then accessing it in the afterlife. And so, was this just kind of a one-off thing? And for me, in reading about it more, it actually very suspiciously sounds like, again, we're talking about a saga that was written in a Christian period, but looking back at pagan sources. But there is a story in in in Matthew, in the Bible, as far as that, where he you know the proverb is something like, don't lay your treasure in the ground, lay it up in heaven. And basically, later in the early medieval period, it says it's basically used in sermons to say, please give to the church. And what treasure you give to the church you will be rewarded for in the afterlife. you know so Convenient. Yeah, exactly. And so that that saga kind of sounds like reminds me a bit of that kind of Christian admonition to kind of lay things up ah here for the benefit of your everlasting soul.
00:25:22
Speaker
And so there's a lot of issues with that, but you'll find this phrase over and over again in the archaeological literature about the Viking Age, Odin's law, maybe they buried this treasure because they thought in the afterlife they would be rich. Interesting. So you have that idea, the idea that you are burying your own objects sort of for something for you to come back to later almost but much much much later when you are late one might say. And then you also have though what you mentioned earlier where it's other people's objects that you're sort of almost as a haha you know sucks for you and you're burying them and breaking them and everything in that respect. So how can you tell the difference?
Ritualistic Nature of Hordes
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, again, it's it's that structure and and what actually made it into the horde. What kinds of objects are in there? Is it all money or is it all arms and armor? And if it's a mix of different things, that tells you something potentially different than if it's just one type of thing. You know, but at the end of the day, yeah, it's getting as much contextual information as you possibly can. And I keep coming back to this, but it's it's my day job at the moment, and it's what's on my mind. The Galloway Horde itself has these incredible bits of silver. And now we have ah silver arm rings and lots of Viking hordes, but the ones in the Galloway Horde, four of them actually have runic inscriptions on them, and three of them
00:26:43
Speaker
look like abbreviations of names. And they're Anglo-Saxon rather than Viking runes. And as far as we can tell, if they are abbreviated names, they're Old English rather than Old Norse language names. So it might be that some of the arm rings in the Galloway Hoard are almost signed as if to say, this bit of silver belongs to this person and this bit of silver was donated by that person. But that is something that is incredibly rare. and quite a chance find. That sounds like friendship bracelets to me. Wow. I've heard a lot of theories about the Galloway Horde, but I haven't. I'm writing that down. Friendship bracelet. Well, what were you talking about earlier, right? that the That our horns would not be represent would not be like a picture of us, or like our own objects would would be representative of like the people and the places that surround us. So someone's been like, oh, these were the friendship bracelets that like I gathered from my friends when I was a little, and I'm going to pop them in.
00:27:41
Speaker
this for Or maybe it's like mail, they're sending stuff to the afterlife. like yeah right yeah and it's just stamped its This is for so and so. Yeah, exactly. But here's here's what it comes down to though, in all of these examples, even if these are, if you think about it, if you believe in this stuff, then that's actually quite pragmatic for you to bury a bit of gold so that you have it later. It's like putting money in the bank for yourself. And so, but even these, even the ones that that you could think of are pragmatic, kind of useful things that I'm just saving for later. You're always kind of burying them in the ground in hopes of retrieving them in the future, or if not you, somebody else. And if not somebody earthly, maybe a supernatural being. But you're always, in a way, each horde is comes with a bit of hope, basically, a hope that it makes it to its destination, whatever that might be. And so maybe, and maybe this isn't the answer you want to hear, but maybe all hordes are ritual.
00:28:40
Speaker
Haha. I was just thinking, oh, this is such a beauty. This episode is having so many beautiful quotes. and I'm like, no, we can't end the episode. Or maybe it's all just ritual. I think half of it's long in the end. Well, I was going to ask about that, actually, because indeed, I remember that's reading that somewhere where some people were saying like, oh, yeah, it can be ritual, or it can be yet almost like a bank, like you deposit it. And it's sort of like, oh, well, it's almost like squirrels, you know, burying their nuts for the winter. And then they just come back to it later. ah Is that anything?
00:29:13
Speaker
that's still considered, or is that sort of a bit of a cop-out option? Lukas Yeah, I think ah with you know with this term, hack silver, where there are Viking Age hordes in which there's a lot of silver, but it's all chopped up in bits. That tells us that these things have been used as payments. They've chopped off an end of this silver ring, and they've used that to pay somebody and And so these hex silver hordes have always been seen as economic hordes, as savings horde. And the the reason that they're still in the ground is because whoever buried them died and nobody else knew the location of the horde. And that's kind of stereotypical way of thinking about these hordes.
00:29:49
Speaker
But I do think at the end of the day, what you know each of these hordes, whether they represent a concept such as savings or security for me or my family, or whether they actually represent the vanquished enemy, you know whether they represent something in that way, I think it tells us that in the times where we have these hordes, you know, people really did see objects in a different way than than the way we do now, in which objects and people kind of aren't so separate. You know, maybe objects stand in for people and they have the essence of people imbued into them in a way that ah sort of archaeological theory is beginning to explore a little bit more seriously. I just love the idea of the Vikings having a lifetime ISA.
00:30:37
Speaker
I think that's really quite amazing. Full with thinking. Okay, so Ash, the Longbeards contacted you and they wanted to know how they should proceed because they found this hoard. So what do you think we should write back to them? I don't think that's a question for me. I think that's a question for Adrian. however I mean, like like we said before, I think they've done the right thing in contacting a series of experts. And and by that, I mean you guys, of course. They've gone to you first, haven't they? And they've done the right thing there. So hopefully, they haven't ah disturbed the context any further, so that when you go back, you can record as much as you can, sort of excavate carefully.
00:31:19
Speaker
and record everything all the way down. At the end of the day, if we know the history of Khazad-doom, as I'm sure we all three of us surely do, you know, Khazad-doom, you know, it only laterally was called the minds of Moria, this dark place associated with violence. You know, it goes back all the way to the earliest days of the Dwarves in the First Age. It's older than, I think, any of the elf the great elf cities of the First Age. And so Khazad-doom actually goes back millennia And so, you know, it could be anything from the First Age onwards, surely. But what we know about Khazad-dum is that in the First Age and into the Second Age, it's actually a palace, a beautiful, quite advanced technological settlement. And eventually in the Second Age, they're also inviting the elves in, and the elves are very friendly with the dwarves, and so it is a place of peace.
00:32:12
Speaker
You know, it's not until the Third Age that Durin's Bane, the Balrog, emerges. And before that, in the Second Age, things only really get bad in the second half of the Second Age, during the War of the Elves and Sauron. And then the Dark Lord begins to order relentless attacks by orcs and and and and things like that. So I think if it's a stash of weapons, and we're pretty sure that it's mostly that, I think it can only belong to one of these periods of war and so that helps us narrow down. I would think certainly second half of the second age and basically up until third age 1980 when Durin's Bane the Balrog is awakened and chases everybody out of Moria. There's no other kind of opportunity for a stash of swords ah to be made there unless of course
00:33:03
Speaker
It's an orc horde. And do orcs horde things? And do they reuse caverns? Like, this is why we have to know exactly what's in there and what kinds of stuff. And if we can find any orc material culture, well, maybe it's not a dwarf horde after all. OK, I'm super excited now. I've got all our notes ready, so we're ready. Yeah. Wow. Excellent. Ready for the expedition then. Exactly. Yes. Brilliant. Let's go to Casa Doom, everyone. Fantastic. Well, that's amazing. Thank you so much. Before we go, Adrian, do you have anything that you'd like to share with our listeners, perhaps some exciting projects that are coming up for any future plans at all?
Galloway Hoard Project & Blogging
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, so right now, as I said, I'm at the National Museum of Scotland, and we're working on the Galloway Horde, a project which is wrapping up this year. And so there's going to be a lot more press statements, announcements, and reveals of things that we've discovered over the past three years or so. So it's very easy to find. Just Google Galloway Horde, but it's nms.ac.uk slash Galloway Horde. and We'll put the link in the show notes. If anybody's interested in these kinds of ramblings, you know I used to 10 years ago now, I started a blog called Almost Archaeology, where I've written about the sort of archaeology of the hobbits and Saruman as an archaeologist and things like that. so
00:34:23
Speaker
That is there for you to explore. Some of it's quite old now, and I think I misspelled Middle Earth without a hyphen and things like these in my young in my in the eras of my youth, but that's there for people to read. We'll forgive you for that, don't worry. That is it. I hope we've spelled it correctly in all our words. ah Have not checked that. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Adrian, and thank you for sharing your expertise and good luck with the yeah the the final ah stages of the the project. It's been really great to hear from you. Thank you both so much. This has been a blast.
00:34:59
Speaker
And thank you to all of you for listening, as always. We're always looking for new episode ideas. So please, if you have any suggestions or if you maybe are yourself an expert and you're thinking, oh, I really wish I could talk to people about this archaeological concept in relation to fantas fantasy, just get in contact with us. You can contact us via email or social media. All of our contact information can be found in the show notes. We also will put all of the links to the different tords and all of the different references that were mentioned in the episode in the show notes as well. but scream ah Did It almost sounds like someone in distress.
00:35:40
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.