A Gold And Rock Crystal Jar From The Viking-Age 'Galloway' Hoard

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Artifacts are More Than Enough: Recentering the Artifact in Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Galloway Hoard is the richest and most varied assemblage of hoarded objects surviving from Viking-age Scotland. Beyond the silver bullion so often found in Viking-age hoards there is also an unusual assemblage of Anglo-Saxon metalwork, ecclesiastical items, heirlooms, and the rare preservation of organic materials. Drilling down through the layers of this exceptional collection, this paper will focus on a carved rock crystal, an heirloom of ancient Rome which, over half a millennium later, was transformed into a jar using early medieval goldwork and included a Latin inscription executed in gold filigree. Wrapped in silk and leather and buried circa AD900 within a silver gilt lidded vessel, this artifact is currently part of a 3-year project entitled ‘Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard’ which aims to explore the biography of each object in the hoard and weave them all together to create new narratives about Viking-age Britain and Ireland, and beyond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Artifacts are More Than Enough: Recentering the Artifact in Historical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow