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00:01It's one of the greatest archaeological treasures ever found.
00:06You look at it and you're in awe of the workmanship.
00:09Glittering Dark Age relics resurrected from a forgotten hiding place
00:14by an amateur and his old metal detector.
00:18Some people will pass it and say,
00:20that's the chap who fed all that gold.
00:22Forged more than a thousand years ago,
00:25the treasure is casting a new and brilliant light on a turbulent age.
00:31On the top of the cranium, a sharp injury by either a sword or an axe.
00:36Dark Age faces emerged from ancient Staffordshire soil.
00:41It's usually at those points you realise you've probably found something that's really exciting.
00:46Wow. Yes.
00:49God, heaven.
00:51Compelling stories lost in the mists of time were revealed in vivid detail.
00:57The Staffordshire Horde is not just as exciting as it was when it first came out.
01:04It's more exciting because we're starting to understand it.
01:08A treasure sparkling with priceless clues, piercing the shadowy veil
01:13that has obscured the enigmatic era dubbed the Dark Ages.
01:18It's the prickle of excitement that drives amateur treasure hunters across forlorn, freezing fields all over Britain.
01:32For Terry Herbert, the beep of a metal detector led to a breathtaking discovery.
01:38More than one and a half thousand pieces of silver and gold.
01:43The nature of these objects meant they were far more valuable than the millions of pounds they represented in mere scrap value.
01:52What I'd found was the equivalent of finding Tutankhamun's treasure.
01:56Why me? Why have I found it? Why has other people been on this field, detecting, and never found it?
02:04Was I destined to find it? I just don't know.
02:07Whatever the reason, the apparently barren, featureless field surrendered far more than silver and gold.
02:16It was the lavish detail contained in Terry's treasure that attracted national and international attention.
02:26The multi-million pound monetary value was shared between Terry and the landowner Fred Johnson.
02:38In return, Britain secured ownership of a hoard that would prove priceless in historic and academic value.
02:45The Birmingham and Stoke Museums took joint custody.
02:51The first of a series of painstaking jobs was to carefully pick away more than a thousand years of dirt from each piece.
02:58Intriguing details began to emerge, thanks to some lateral thinking and a primitive tool provided by Mother Nature.
03:06We felt that we needed to maybe just think about the tools that we were using with the gold being a fairly soft material.
03:16And after passing it around for a while in the department, we came up with the idea of using some kind of natural pointy thing.
03:28Thorns proved to be the sharpest tools in the box.
03:32Strong enough to dislodge dirt, but soft enough to protect the precious metal underneath.
03:37A combination of primitive and highly sophisticated instruments began to reveal stunning detail on the Dark Age treasure.
03:47And more would follow.
03:50After the initial find of around 1,500 pieces, the site yielded even more treasure.
03:57Subsequent digs made a total of three and a half thousand objects.
04:02Most were tiny.
04:05Others were larger.
04:07Like this garnet-studded gold piece found wedged inside a sword bottle.
04:14Pieces of an ancient puzzle began to come together.
04:18And it was clear that some of the precious fragments weren't designed to adorn bodies, but to destroy them.
04:25I'm really interested in this piece because it brings home what these things were really used for.
04:37It's a pair of hilt plates or a hilt plate in a tray.
04:40On one side, we can see a slot tapering at both ends to show the wicked cutting edges of this hacking sword.
04:51A really chilling piece of equipment.
04:54That's very sharp, isn't it?
04:55It's very, very sharp and beautifully shaped for its function as a weapon.
05:00And there are marks around the hole.
05:03Yes, you can just see the imprint of one of these little filigree wire hilt bindings.
05:09So the grip is here.
05:12My hand is, yes, my imaginary grip.
05:16You can suddenly see the business end of all the cold steel.
05:20In turbulent times, weapons were often far more valuable than coins or jewels.
05:32The remains of a young man who lived around the same time show telltale signs of a violent end, hacked to death in a forgotten battle.
05:41What we're seeing here very much is a whole series of injuries coming in from all different directions.
05:57What we've got on the top of the cranium here is a sharp injury that's been sustained by either a sword or an axe.
06:04Flaking away a bit of bone and you can see that the spongy bone on the inside of the cranium is actually exposed.
06:13But obviously it didn't go all the way through to where the brain is.
06:20He's actually also got a fracture to his mandible.
06:23This is something that's more associated with a blunt object.
06:29He's also got a series of three different fractures around the back of his cranium.
06:34One here, one here and one here.
06:40He's also got a fracture to this vertebra, the first cervical vertebra.
06:45And what you can see is that the blade has actually passed right the way through the spinal cord.
06:50So overall, this individual sustained 33 separate injuries around the time of death.
07:03Double-edged swords were one of many different kinds of weapons used to kill.
07:10Siaks were single-edged, all-purpose knives that gave those who wielded them their name.
07:15Saxons, men of the Siaks, or men of the knife.
07:24Most of the hilt fittings clearly are sword hilt fittings.
07:28We have a few Sax hilt fittings, not very many.
07:31What we do have are some quite unique pieces.
07:34They are very rare things.
07:36The pieces found in the Staffordshire Horde were not only rare, but of the highest quality.
07:43There was actually a shadow that you could see on the top of this piece.
07:48Now, again, purely by chance, I realised that just a couple of minutes earlier I'd been looking at the piece that must have sat there.
07:54Because the shadow is a very distinctive shape, and this piece is exactly the right shape to fit.
08:01Now, that first piece, there's a very distinctive decoration forming a panel around the edge.
08:06And looking at that decoration, it suddenly came to me that we had two other pieces that had the same decoration on, which are these two.
08:17So we had four pieces that belonged together and seemed to be, obviously, part of one piece, one object.
08:24Now, what made it clear what we were looking at was that.
08:30As you can see there, there's a shape where a knife blade has come out of this handle.
08:34So clearly we're looking at a knife handle.
08:38This is the bottom of the handle, as you can tell by the blade coming out.
08:43What you would then have had is the hand grip, and at the top of the handle you had this piece with the flange.
08:50We had this that we hoped would actually match that flange, and when we put the two together, it did.
09:00And that one fitted beautifully on top of there.
09:03So there we have the most part of the top of the knife handle.
09:07And this last piece, unfortunately, it's damaged because of the way it's been taken apart.
09:13But that would sit here, on top of where the shadow is.
09:18So we're looking at a very, very elaborate knife handle.
09:22I mean, there's about 88 grams of gold in this, which is something like three ounces of gold.
09:28So this is a very important piece.
09:29I mean, it would have belonged to somebody of the highest quality in Anglo-Saxon times.
09:36It was an extraordinary discovery.
09:39But it raised another question.
09:40Where were the blades of all these magnificent weapons?
09:52The Anglo-Saxons valued the blades as much, if not more, than the gold fittings on the hilts.
09:59Because the blade was the thing that was going to defend your life.
10:05The period between the end of the Roman Empire and the middle 11th century is known as the Dark Ages.
10:12Because few written records survive from that time in Britain and much of Western Europe.
10:17The Saxons didn't leave a legacy of impressive monuments or learning.
10:24But the weapons they left behind speak volumes about their skill as craftsmen.
10:29On some levels, a Saxonsmith, it would be a very simple thing.
10:33But I don't think the people who are producing these blades were simple smiths.
10:37I think they would have been specialists.
10:38The blades that they used back then were being used in reality.
10:43Now, a sword blade has to be tough.
10:46It also has to have an element of hardness.
10:48It needs to maintain a good edge.
10:51It needs to have the correct geometry so it will cut through things.
10:54So it's actually quite a complex piece of engineering.
11:00Blades were crafted using a technique known as pattern welding,
11:05which also creates swirls and ripples in the metal.
11:14To show just how much skill went into making one,
11:18modern-day swordsmith Owen Bush attempted to craft a replica Siak's blade
11:22to fit the precious fittings found in the Staffordshire hoard.
11:32He sandwiched almost 300 layers of preformed steel together.
11:39The white-hot steel sandwich was the building block of a pattern welded knife.
11:44I'm going to fold this material and it will become the edge.
11:54It's very similar to the techniques the Japanese used to make their samurai swords.
11:58Modern hydraulic hammers land 240 blows a minute.
12:03A Saxon smith would need an eight-man sledgehammer team working non-stop
12:07to get the same force and speed.
12:15So compared to my Saxon brethren, it's quite a tool.
12:18I had a big advantage.
12:21The back of the blade was next.
12:22I'm twisting this bar. It's going to be a decorative element for the back of the Sax.
12:30Twisting the hot steel up to 50 times creates star and chevron patterns along the back of the blade.
12:39But it also adds strength, a brilliant Anglo-Saxon engineering innovation.
12:43Metal work for the middle section required sawing triangular notches out of one bar that was pressed into another.
12:56That'll give me an interlocking pattern like teeth running along the edge of the blade.
13:03Modern smiths need sophisticated equipment like a 250-ton power press to do the job.
13:10Saxon smiths add little more than fire, hammers and muscle.
13:19They're acting in a very complex engineering way,
13:25which, considering this is how the Saxons made their blades, is quite amazing.
13:33But it's skill rather than 21st century technology
13:37that's needed to bring all the individual pieces together.
13:42Forge welding is the final critical step that makes a finely crafted blade out of raw steel.
13:49The temperatures, pressures and hammer blows have to be just right.
13:53The dying art of metalworking.
13:54The replica Saxon Siax began to take shape.
14:04Even with an array of machines, modern tools and pre-formed, pre-shaped steel,
14:10it took almost six hours to make a single blade.
14:13An Anglo-Saxon smith would have needed at least a week to make the same thing.
14:17It's an impressive result.
14:29But what of the jewel-studded gold adornments?
14:36Like today, the gold would have been hard to find in England.
14:40It must have come from somewhere else.
14:50Gold was scarce in 7th century Britain.
14:53The Saxon craftsmen commissioned to make such masterpieces
14:57had to make the most of their precious materials.
14:59Gold objects tend to be hollow.
15:04They tend to be fabricated, made up like boxes of bottom, sides and top.
15:12Most of the gold objects found in the Staffordshire hoard are hollow,
15:18but their weight is significant.
15:22The different shades of gold are also striking
15:24and provide a clue as to the source of the precious metal.
15:34The different colours suggest impurities.
15:37Like chemical fingerprints, impurities can point to where gold comes from.
15:43British Museum investigators analysed the gold with X-ray fluorescence.
15:48X-ray fluorescence.
15:52X-ray fluorescence is often the museum sort of known as the curator's dream instrument
15:56because it can be used on practically any material.
16:01It doesn't require someone to be taken.
16:03You're not making contact with the object.
16:05It gives you an elemental composition at a particular spot.
16:10You're firing an X-ray beam at the surface.
16:12It's interacting with the different atoms that are present
16:15and depending on the X-ray that are collected,
16:18the energies are very characteristic of the different elements.
16:23The samples tested more than 75% pure,
16:26the equivalent of around 18 carats, fine jewelry grade gold.
16:30But X-ray testing also revealed other metals like silver and copper,
16:41which might have been added when the gold was reused.
16:49Gold has always been a precious commodity,
16:52endlessly recycled over the ages.
16:54Impurities can be introduced each time gold is melted down and reworked.
17:04The question remained,
17:06where did the Saxons get their gold in the first place?
17:09The likely source of a lot of this gold is probably the Byzantine Empire.
17:20It's the superpower of its day.
17:22Supposedly, when this gentleman, Justinian I,
17:25when he comes to the throne in 527,
17:28he is said to have inherited a treasury
17:31which contained 400,000 pounds weight of gold.
17:34So, you know, in Staffordshire we have maybe 11 pounds in the hoard.
17:39So, this is why I'm talking about Byzantium as the super power
17:43and the likely source of much of this gold, ultimately.
17:48Before it was renamed Istanbul,
17:51Constantinople was once the capital of ancient Byzantium.
17:54Gold and other precious metals are still traded in the city today.
17:58As the place where Asia meets Europe,
18:08East meets West,
18:10it has always held a strategic geographic and economic position.
18:14In the 7th century, Byzantium was one of the richest places on Earth,
18:19a trading empire that spanned the civilized world.
18:22This is a solidus of the Emperor Anastasius, end of 5th, early 6th century.
18:32And this type of coin is being considered as the dollar of the Middle Ages.
18:38The fact that they can conduct their business from one end of the Earth to the other,
18:43using this precious coin.
18:45So, Byzantium did know about Britain, and Britain did know about Byzantium.
18:53Merchants and sailors, also coming from Britain, knew about Byzantium
18:59and came back full of stories and, of course, merchandise.
19:04In Anglo-Saxon Britain, such currency was rare.
19:08By the beginning of the 5th century, when, essentially, Rome loses control in Britain,
19:16the money economy collapses.
19:19Gold coins in the 7th century are rare, I mean, very rare.
19:23I think your average Saxon would scarcely have seen a coin,
19:26let alone have come into contact with them.
19:28Money itself does not really feature for most people.
19:30Coins were a convenient, highly transportable source of precious metals like gold.
19:41Perhaps Byzantine gold was used to adorn the fine and fearsome weapons of high-status Anglo-Saxons in Britain.
19:49It's estimated that more than 3,000 Byzantine gold coins would have been needed
19:55to make the objects in the Staffordshire hoard.
19:57If dark-aged Anglo-Saxons traded in foreign gold, perhaps such trade brought jewels as well.
20:17The Staffordshire hoard is studded with thousands of rich red gems, garnets.
20:23These multi-shaded semi-precious stones were not mined in Britain.
20:34Where did they come from?
20:36Intriguingly, samples were taken to the home of other kinds of masterpieces to find an answer.
20:50As well as priceless art, the Louvre in Paris also houses a particle accelerator.
21:05Such a device can read chemical clues contained in gems like garnets.
21:09Garnet is a mineral, and the composition of a garnet is not a fixed composition.
21:18It's not the same as other gemstones.
21:21A garnet is a family of gemstones.
21:24There are half a dozen of them, and each has a specific composition.
21:29Bombarding the garnets with a high-energy light beam revealed their unique chemical fingerprints.
21:41It was hoped that these fingerprints might reveal where the individual dark-aged garnets were mined.
21:46Is it possible to see that one again?
21:49Yes.
21:57Individual stones could be precisely targeted.
22:01Maximum, if I remember where.
22:03You did it?
22:04No, it's okay.
22:05No, we are crossing it.
22:06I thought maybe...
22:07Where do you want to go?
22:08To the mushroom?
22:09Analyzing garnets, for instance, using the accelerator, is very simple.
22:16You communicate energy, and then the material absorbs it and re-emits it, but with a different energy.
22:27And if you look at the energy emitted, then you have inside this energy the signal of the composition.
22:35And so the signal is different from one garnet to the other, depending on the composition.
22:42From this experiment, we derive the accurate composition of the garnets.
22:49It's a very accurate technique.
22:51And it is due to the fact that it's very accurate that we can distinguish one garnet coming from that mine
22:58to a garnet coming from the other one.
23:01More than 400 stones were tested.
23:05As well as chemical composition, forensic analysis also revealed other intriguing details.
23:18The cut and polish work was exquisite.
23:22Saxon craftsmen hand-cut the gems into intricate shapes,
23:27and then polished flat facets perfectly smooth.
23:30It was yet another remarkable feat by dark age artisans.
23:35A collection of the kind of tools they used was found less than a hundred miles from where the hoard was buried.
23:48What we've got in front of us here is a unique find from the British Isles.
23:58It's a collection of tools found in the grave of a 7th century metal worker.
24:03This man, if he wasn't directly involved with the high-grade metal work we see in the Staffordshire hoard, certainly got an acquaintance with it.
24:16Gemstone cutting and polishing in the 7th century was an exact, time-consuming job requiring expert hands.
24:24The individual pieces of garnet will be mounted on a thing called a dot stick, a piece of wood.
24:33And then applied to a turning wheel.
24:42The wheel would be revolved backwards and forwards using a bow and a piece of string.
24:47The wheel would be made out of soft copper or iron.
24:52And applied to that, that will be a cutting material, an abrasive, probably wet sand.
25:01And that will bite into the garnet and allow the stones to be shaped.
25:07There are problems with this.
25:08There are a lot of things we don't understand.
25:11Why didn't the cutting wheels wear out?
25:14How did they keep the sharp profiles?
25:17Because we've got sharp corners on a lot of these cut stones.
25:22So much we don't understand and need to investigate.
25:28Archaeological investigations continued at the field where the gems and gold objects were found.
25:44Researchers were hoping to find more clues in and around the site that could tell them why the treasure was buried there in the first place.
26:02So-called geo-fizz equipment was used to survey the site for any anomalies in electrical resistance underground.
26:09These can point to buried features like post holes, wall foundations or burials.
26:22It took a week to collect and collate the information.
26:29The result was a kind of three-dimensional map of potential archaeological targets, identified as white dots.
26:40Among many dots, one feature looked particularly promising.
26:45A long curved line in the same spot where the hoard was found.
26:56At the site where an amateur metal detector found a hoard of Saxon gold, archaeologists investigated an intriguing feature.
27:03A mysterious curve had shown up on a ground survey.
27:12When they carried out the geophysical survey, they found that curving line in the area where the hoard was found that we all thought to begin with was going to be a ditch.
27:22All they found was sandy soil and an odd band of clay.
27:25When they excavated on the site, we didn't find what we most wanted to find, which was a context for the hoard.
27:35A pit to post hole, a box, or better still, some associated structures so that it had been placed in a building or something that represents a shrine.
27:44There was nothing like that.
27:48It was disappointing, but not a dead end.
27:51Another team of environmental archaeologists were called in.
27:55They took samples from different parts of the site to find out what it looked like 1,300 years ago.
28:02Perhaps the landscape could reveal why this spot was chosen as a burial place for Saxon treasure.
28:07Generally, archaeologists like their archaeology in context, in sealed layers, that we can date.
28:18Of course, the issue with the hoard was that the gold is, of course, found in the plough soil, so that's effectively a disturbed context.
28:26So, really, our first phase of work was to see if we could find any other archaeological context on the site that were more reliably sealed
28:33and might contain environmental material that might help us understand the context of the archaeology itself.
28:40The kind of environmental material they wanted was microscopic.
28:45Pollen particles can reconstruct a lost ancient landscape.
28:49Anyone who has hay fever will know, of course, pollen gets liberated in huge quantities in the spring and summer.
28:54And that pollen can end up being washed or blown into deposits, into particular deposits that accumulate.
29:03The pollen is preserved within the sediment.
29:05In the case of archaeological sites, as the layers of archaeology build up, the pollen, of course, builds up with it.
29:10So, you know, what we can do is extract sequences through the archaeological layers and, effectively, we end up with a record of the changing vegetation reconstructed from those archaeological layers.
29:20Plant pollen, insects, and seeds could build up a picture of what lived and grew there in the 7th century.
29:38What the sequence seems to show is a progressive loss of woodland over time.
29:42So, going from maybe a landscape with sort of patchy woodland as evidence for trees such as older that are growing probably in the bottom of the valley below the site on the damper soils.
29:52And we think, actually, on the hill slopes itself, we have lots of heather pollen, so a sort of heathy environment.
29:59Using environmental evidence, it was possible to reconstruct what the hill looked like in Saxon times.
30:06A scrubby landscape of heather and clumps of trees.
30:11The band of clay around the hill supported different vegetation, making it a local natural landmark.
30:19It was a natural hiding place where buried treasure could easily be found again.
30:24The site was also close to a man-made feature, the ancient Roman road of Watling Street.
30:32Perhaps this road, built 400 years before Anglo-Saxon Britain, was used to transport the treasure.
30:48Results from the gemstone analysis in Paris were intriguing.
30:51Ingenious repairs were found. In this case, a missing garnet had been replaced with a piece of amber.
31:05Another beautiful checkerboard patterned object was found to be made of ancient Roman glass.
31:24It could have been 500 years old when it was reworked. A stunning example of Saxon recycling.
31:31A similar object was also made of recycled Roman glass.
31:46The different pieces had the same chemical signature.
31:50They had all come from the same piece of cobalt blue glass, perhaps a reused Roman mosaic tile.
31:57They were probably made in the same workshop, by the same craftsmen.
32:01The composition of the garnets and other gems told another fascinating story.
32:18Like the gold, the jewels came from around the world.
32:25Cabochon garnets in the large centrepieces of various crosses have a chemical signature similar to garnets mined in Sri Lanka and India.
32:40Perhaps Roman traders had brought them back into the empire and transformed them into jewellery.
32:47Before Anglo-Saxons acquired and recycled them centuries later.
32:51The more numerous flat cut garnets showed high levels of magnesium and chromium, the chemical signature of garnets mined in Bohemia or the modern-day Czech Republic.
33:07There's no way of knowing when they were mined, but they would have been bought and sold before finding their way into Saxon workshops.
33:20It seemed as if the Dark Ages were illuminated by burgeoning trade.
33:28Staffordshire's Saxon treasure was revealing all kinds of amazing detail.
33:43I hope I'm not wrong here.
33:46I think that looks like a very long-jawed person with a moustache and a brow.
33:52I'm only going to be able to see it up close, I'm afraid.
33:54You'll have to look at this.
33:55You'll have to look at this.
33:56Let me have a look at this.
33:57Oh, yes, it is.
33:59Oh, fantastic.
34:00So we've got a human face on one side and a boar's head on the other.
34:05I think you're right.
34:06In his cleaning.
34:07I mean, we're standing here speculating.
34:09I know.
34:10A rib running down the front.
34:13With a crest.
34:14It's part of the crest.
34:16Going into the nasal.
34:18It's looking birdy to me.
34:20Yes.
34:22When you're cleaning the objects, it is fantastic to get the reveal.
34:26And it's actually really nice when you're working alongside a curator or researcher as well,
34:30and they've actually looked at a slightly soil-covered piece and go,
34:33I want you to clean this area because I feel there's something important under here.
34:38So you're working with them.
34:40So in some respects you're cleaning and under the microscope you can see,
34:43you know, the metals and the shapes appearing.
34:47And we have a monitor to one side, so the curator or researcher is kind of on your shoulder
34:52looking at the screen.
34:53And sometimes you hear them talk and other times they go very quiet.
34:57And it's usually at those points you realise you've probably found something that's really exciting them.
35:02A Saxon face gazed back over 1,300 years.
35:09Wow.
35:10Yes.
35:11Good heavens.
35:15I'd like to look at his eyes again to see.
35:22You wouldn't want to knock his pints of beer over in a bar, would you?
35:27No.
35:28Looking at a pommel cap being cleaned and seeing animals and faces emerging,
35:34and to be the first people to see those faces and those animals for 1,300 years,
35:45they've never been seen before.
35:47It's an incredible process of discovery.
35:50Yes.
35:51So it's one of these dual images.
35:53Yes.
35:54Which they do so well.
35:55The craftsmanship was extraordinary.
36:01Despite some severe damage, its dual design had survived the ravages of time.
36:07When viewed on one side, a helmeted face emerged.
36:14When turned, the human face transformed into that of some kind of animal.
36:22The Saxons often deliberately disguised their animal artwork.
36:31The Anglo-Saxons loved riddles.
36:34And they put these visual riddles on the objects.
36:39And we're seeing those and sort of sharing a clever idea over 1,300 years.
36:48Something that they enjoyed.
36:50It's lovely to be sharing these things over so much time.
36:53We can look at the things that have travelled in time.
36:57And we enjoy the things that they enjoyed.
37:01These exquisite objects have survived.
37:08But their meaning and the Anglo-Saxon culture has long disappeared.
37:16It's unlikely that any of this was art for art's sake.
37:20There are meanings in there.
37:23The birds and the animals would have carried a meaning.
37:30But that's long forgotten.
37:49Some of the horde's most mysterious objects are these tiny pieces of embossed silver depicting stylized warriors and animals.
37:57They've been broken into more than 100 pieces.
38:02There are strange things going on there.
38:04Processions of warriors kneeling or running.
38:09Warriors wearing helmets with birds head crests on them.
38:15Experts suspected such objects adorned a warrior's helmet.
38:19But they couldn't be sure.
38:21Only four Anglo-Saxon helmets had ever been found in Britain.
38:26If they were pieces of a warrior's helmet, they could have been the most significant find in the entire horde.
38:33Lots of the marching warrior scenes seem to follow the same basic designs.
38:49Warriors with eagle-crested helmets marching one direction, boar-crested helmets marching the opposite direction.
38:56I've managed to make some partial reconstructions of what the images may be on the foils.
39:04These are in wax ready for casting in bronze.
39:06Then they can be used to lay a thin foil over the top.
39:10You put a sheet of lead on top of that and then you beat the lead to press the foil onto the bronze dye underneath.
39:16So each one will come up with the original form.
39:21Looking at the foils we've got, the total area they seem to represent wouldn't cover the top of a helmet.
39:31It may be that we have the scraps that have come from an entire helmet.
39:36We may have the selective pickings that have been ripped off broken helmets over a period of time.
39:43Experts investigating intriguing pieces of embossed sacks and silver thought they may have formed part of a helmet.
39:51The pieces that we suspected were eyebrows from the helmet originally appeared to fit possibly on the front of a helmet as an eyebrow piece.
40:02I was never happy with that.
40:04They follow a nice curvature, it was a possible.
40:08It turned out that other gold pieces in the hoard were a better fit.
40:13Together they seem to form a new kind of accessory.
40:17They sit fairly comfortably on top of the original cheek piece.
40:24So it's goodbye eyebrows.
40:26The pieces seem to belong to a newly discovered kind of Saxon decoration between the cheek piece and the body of the helmet.
40:34But experts couldn't be sure.
40:39Much of the detail surrounding the find also remained a mystery.
40:44Who buried it there and why?
40:47We're a very long way of understanding.
40:52I'm not sure that we'll ever understand why it was collected and why it came to be buried.
41:00It could have been hidden away in the face of a perceived threat.
41:05It could simply be loot.
41:07But then in each case we get back to the fact why is it mainly weapon fittings.
41:20At first they thought the hoard was battlefield loot collected after an epic fight.
41:26But as more details emerged, they realised that the hoard could not have come from one battle.
41:39Some of the treasure was already old when it was buried.
41:42Perhaps it was brought to Britain during 6th century invasions.
41:47The two oldest pieces are carved with faces, boars, heads and strange animals.
41:58They could both date from as early as the year 550.
42:06But the style of other pieces suggests they date from much later.
42:10a folded cross could be as late as 680.
42:30Other pieces could range anywhere from the late 6th to the 8th centuries.
42:34The so-called helmet piece, and another unknown object, are likely to be even later in date.
42:48Other pieces, including one with a Christian inscription, are 8th century.
42:53It means the hoard could cover a wide time frame spanning some 150 years.
43:16The Staffordshire hoard is slowly revealing some of its secrets.
43:20The large amount of high-status gold battleware points to the existence of a previously unknown warrior elite.
43:35Researchers know that gold and garnets came from as far away as India and Sri Lanka.
43:42It seems trade was just as rich as the skills of amazing Anglo-Saxon craftsmen.
43:48The dark ages never looked so bright.
43:53After two years, the Staffordshire hoard is not just as exciting as it was when it first came out.
44:03It's more exciting because we're starting to understand it.
44:06It's a wonderful process because we never know what's going to come out.
44:20This is a process of exploring.
44:22We're exploring. We're exploring. We're exploring the past and we're looking at the 7th century.
44:27This heroic age.
44:29And beginning to understand something of this amazing time.
44:34Get on board the world's fastest train. Brand new tomorrow at 9.
44:51Stay tuned to National Geographic channel for the truth behind UFOs.
44:54See you in the next video.