Geoff, David and Lesley attended the ‘Hoarding and Deposition of Metalwork: A British Perspective’ PAS Conference held at the British Museum on Saturday 29th October.
The event was divided into two sessions:
The following three pages are abstracts of the papers that were presented. The speakers have agreed to the British Museum publishing their papers and this will be available shortly.
A lot of theories were postulated regarding hoards and their deposition:
What constitutes a hoard? – single Iron Age coins?
Were hoards deposited in times of trouble or instability – war, raids, disease etc. Could hoards be identified as having been buried at times of and in places of battles?
Were hoards collected to show off wealth or to melt down and reuse?
Were hoards collected together for economic reasons – to regulate the price of precious metals by withholding from the market, to keep old coinage when new devalued coinage was being brought to the economy, hidden to avoid paying taxes or simply to keep wealth out of other people’s hands?
Were hoards votive offerings – were things left as tribute or had the depositor intended to come back and recover them?
Where were hoards sited in the landscape? – in prehistory – around and overlooking water courses, springs and Parish boundaries.
Have reasons for deposition been fabricated to suit our current views of life – a convenient reflection of current life back in time?
It was indeed suprising how much information can be gained from the contents of a hoard!
The conference posed more questions than gave answers – obviously a lot more research is needed!
We would like to thank the PAS and the British Museum for hosting this interesting conference.
