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539 Great Cross and associated mounts (gold & garnet)
IMAGE
number
BIR6182357
Image title
539 Great Cross and associated mounts (gold & garnet)
(made up of K655, K656, K657, K658, K659, K308, K1314)
Great cross is the largest object in the Hoard by weight. Originally decorated with six separately-attached mounts containing garnets, only some of which survive. The cross was bent and folded up before burial, possibly to destroy a powerful religious object, or maybe just to make it easier to transport.There are no similar crosses known from England, but experts believe it is an Anglo-Saxon ‘reimagining’ of a particular type of jewelled cross used in the Roman Christian church. The arms of the cross are covered with an incised design of interlaced animal forms which, with the garnets, are pagan Anglo-Saxon in style, but here they are used to decorate a definitely Christian object. That is why the great cross is so important, because it gives us a rare glimpse of changing ideas during the conversion of England to Christianity in the first half of the 7th century AD. Its style suggests it may have been made for the East Anglian royal kingdom.
The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found. Discovered in a field near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, England on 5 July 2009, it consists of around 4,000 items. The majority of the objects in the hoard are gold, and were made between AD 570-650. The hoard was buried in the mid 7th century (AD 650-675).