Distant origin of star object from the Galloway Hoard revealed ahead of its first public display

National World

The incredible journey of the star object of the Galloway Hoard - one of the most important hauls of Viking-age silver  ever found - has been revealed.

Transcript

00:00I'm Martin Goldberg. I'm Principal Curator of Medieval Archaeology and History at National Museum Scotland.

00:08This is the last of our major reveals from the Galloway Horde Research Programme.

00:13This is the lidded vessel that has always sat at the very heart of the Horde

00:18and contained all of the most unusual and exotic items.

00:22So this object has been on a long journey over the last ten years.

00:26This is not what it looked like when it came out of the ground.

00:30But what you can see are the preserved remnants of the very fragile archaeological textiles

00:36that wrapped this vessel when it went into the ground a thousand years ago.

00:42Our first step in investigating the vessel was to have it 3D scanned

00:47so that we could try and see the decorated surface underneath those archaeological textiles.

00:53Our job is to both preserve it but also to do research on it.

00:58We wanted to record and identify the textiles but then the process of cleaning begins

01:05in order to reveal what we can of the decorated surface.

01:09So the technique that we used was laser cleaning

01:13and this allowed us to remove the green corrosion that was covering a lot of the silver surface of the vessel

01:20but also helped us to preserve the textiles that were adhering to the surface.

01:25So we were striking that careful balance between revealing and preservation.

01:30What we can now see on the decorated surface has enhanced that initial glimpse that we had from our 3D scans.

01:39We can see the Zoroastrian iconography that we first identified.

01:44The Zoroastrian iconography is inspired by the state religion of the Sasanian Empire

01:50that was centred on modern day Iran.

01:53That includes things like the fire stand and also some of the exotic creatures that we can see

01:59that look like leopards and tigers.

02:02But what that tells us is that this vessel has travelled thousands of miles to get to Galloway

02:08and is very very far away from where we would expect to find something like this.

02:13Further research using scientific techniques has looked at the origins of the silver and the yellow inlay on the vessel

02:22and this has allowed us to get even closer to the origin of where this vessel came from.

02:28The lead isotope signature of the metals that have made this vessel

02:33have been pinpointed to a mine that is in modern day Iran

02:37so that fits perfectly with our theory that this comes or was certainly inspired

02:43by the iconography of the Sasanian Empire.

02:47So people will be able to see this object on display for the very first time

02:52in the British Museum's Silk Roads exhibition from the 26th of September.

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