Anglo-Saxon Treasure Found in Britain

[Doom_Dude]

I just happened to notice this and thought it was pretty interesting. Apparently an amateur treasure hunter, armed with a metal detector discovered a huge stash of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver artifacts. They figure the total number of artifacts could total more than 1,500.

Check this out.

Moar info here.

Also here.

[Phoebus]

Nice! I heard about this one. Everyone made fun of the guy who eventually found this treasure, but he stuck with it.
And now who's laughing!

[Aliotroph?]

I wonder how that works? Do ancient things buried in the ground revert to him, the government, or does it just matter whose land it was on?

[REoL]

I think you send it to cash4gold.com, and get a cool $500 for it!

[Phoebus]

According to the first article cited:

The hoard was officially declared treasure by a coroner on Thursday, which means it will be valued by experts and offered up for sale to a museum in Britain. Proceeds will be split 50-50 between Herbert and his farmer friend, who has not been identified. The find's exact location is being kept secret to deter looters.

[Mystic]

cool story, its all news to me. I didnt think those metal detectors worked, the one I bought (a crappy national geographic) certainly doesnt work, it keeps detecting itself everywhere. Britain is probably covered in possible hoards like that one, back in those days there was a lot of gold and silver here and there were no banks, wealthy folk had to hide their loot or lose it.

[Jamman]

Making the case for ownership.

The items belong to any living relatives, which can get a little bit sticky because someone could theoretically trace their ancestry back 1000 years if they were determined. If the item has no known ownership then the item simple belongs to who ever found it (or produced the funding for the dig).

It's a lot more complex than that, but in a nutshell...

[Mystic]

very few 'normal' people can trace back more than a couple hundred years accurately. Unfortunately hoards of treasure never belonged to ordinary folk, they belonged to the ancient equivalent of the mafia whom we now refer to as the nobility and most of them probably can trace their ancestors back quite far.

My own opinion is that the treasure was most likely gained by violent means and as the victims of that violence cant be traced accurately the treasure belongs to whoever finds it. seems fair to me.

[Jamman]

What the hell are you talking about?

[Mystic]

Im talking about the type of people who most likely owned gold treasure type stuff. Back in those days you could rise to the top quite quickly simply by being a homicidal maniac with good sword skills. Murder a few people, take all their stuff, recruit a gang of ruthless thugs then go on a rampage and pretty soon you could be a king in your own little kingdom or Chief of your own Clan. The descendants of such nasty folk call themselves 'nobility' and sometimes 'royal'. Without exception the nobility are descended from a long line of ruthless thugs.

[Jet1337]

Too bad none of this shit is in the U.S.

[Jamman]

What a bizarre rant.