mercia

Fellow residents of our Early-Medieval Britannia! Many of you will have become aware of strange men coming from oversees to our green and pleasant island home.

You may be wondering who these people are, what they have come for and how long they plan to stay. To we Britons, their barbarian and guttural languages all sound very much the same... but let me inform you that in fact these visitors actually come from different places and each have different cultures- though they share many traits, they will be offended if you should accidentally confuse them for one another. So how do you tell your Jute from your Angle, for example?

This ye olde Heritage-key guide should clarify all for you. 

The Staffordshire Hoard has arrived on display at the British Museum in London, as the farmer on whose land it was found has described his experience as 'incredible'. Heritage Key will be heading there to see the maginficent treasure today - look out for the pictures right here! The gold pieces, thought to be part of a Saxon war bounty, were found in a field in the midlands county this July.

The Staffordshire Hoard has been one of the most staggering and inspirational discoveries in British history. Hundreds of stunning gold Saxon artefacts, all bundled into one stash and found over a thousand years later by a lone metal detecting enthusiast - it's a story that could have come straight out of an archaeological thriller. While the necessary steps are taken to secure their future, the treasures are being housed in Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery. Heritage Key talks to the museum's resident scholar Dave Simmonds about his thoughts on a momentous breakthrough in British heritage.

If seems that Britain (the Hoard made it to 'most viewed' on the BBC website today) - and Heritage Key (mine is definitely not the first blogpost on the topic) - can't get enough of the Mercian Treasure baptised 'the Staffordshire Hoard'. Realising what an incredible find this is - or standard archaeological procedure? - Birmingham University Archaeology published the actual unearthing of the collection of Anglo-Saxon hoarded wealth, at that point still looking more like little stones than the actual gems they are. In the video you see the archaeologists carefully searching the sand, digging up the precious artefacts... but help me out here and clarify; what is that - rather funny - apparatus? A metal detector on wheels?

Anyway, make sure to watch this great 'revealing' video by Birmingham University Archaeology, and applaud them for filming the excavation and making that large an amount of image material and information available on the web.

The recent discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard has turned up over 1,500 pieces of stunning gold and silver artfacts from the 7th century Dark Ages era. The find has been described as "unparalleled" and represents the largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever to have been discovered, within an area which was the heartland of the Kingdom of Mercia. The Mercian tribe was particularly aggressive in their conquests and fought to expand the land in their control - centered on the valley of the river Trent, what today is the English Midlands -  in wars against Northumbria and East Anglia. Out of the more than thousand artefacts, we've chosen the 5 most astonishing ones to show to you.