One day, or perhaps one night, in the late seventh century an
unknown party traveled along an old Roman road that cut across an
uninhabited heath fringed by forest in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
Mercia. Possibly they were soldiers, or then again maybe thieves—the
remote area would remain notorious for highwaymen for centuries—but at
any rate they were not casual travelers. Stepping off the road near the
rise of a small ridge, they dug a pit and buried a stash of treasure in
the ground.
For 1,300 years the treasure lay undisturbed, and eventually the
landscape evolved from forest clearing to grazing pasture to working
field. Then treasure hunters equipped with metal detectors—ubiquitous in
Britain—began to call on farmer Fred Johnson, asking permission to walk
the field. "I told one I'd lost a wrench and asked him to find that,"
Johnson says. Instead, on July 5, 2009, Terry Herbert came to the
farmhouse door and announced to Johnson that he had found Anglo-Saxon
treasure.
Read the rest of this article...
