Hoarding heirlooms

The ‘Viking-age’ Galloway Hoard from south-west Scotland contains Hiberno-Scandinavian material which in many ways epitomises the bullion nature of such hoards in the Irish Sea zone around AD 900. However, buried alongside silver arm rings and ingots was an elaborate silver gilt lidded vessel packed full of objects of a very different character. Many of these were several hundred years old, made of glass, stone and even dirt. Some were wrapped in textiles and placed together with other personal valuables such as contemporary brooches, gold mounts, silk braids and an unusual rock crystal jar – with the name of a Northumbrian bishop inscribed in gold on its base. A number of these objects were probably of religious value and significance, while others might have represented objects passed down through family lines. Several items are most closely paralleled in Merovingian and pagan Anglo Saxon female graves, introducing aspects relevant to the female guardianship and inheritance of material culture in the early Medieval period. This collection of jewellery, amulets, relics and heirlooms presents a unique opportunity to look at different ‘values’ through distant connections in terms of both time and place and consider the juxtaposition of culturally distinct materials connected through burial together in a complex hoard.