Pagan Thetford

I hadn't heard about the Thetford Treasure, except that it is one.

In UK law, a Treasure is a find of silver or gold. Since UK uses a fiat currency, unowned silver and gold are legally biens nationaux. If you find it, you get reimbursed half the value of the metal in UK scrip. The owner of the field gets the other half. I learnt this in a Roald Dahl story, on the Mildenhall.

The Mildenhall is more-famous because it has Latin words and so is dateable. The Thetford, by contrast, is nonliterate. It also doesn't have coins. Based on criteria apparently retrieved from some East Anglian haberdasher, the Thetford was considered late fourth century.

It's now got a redate. The imagery on the Treasure is cross-ref'ed. Either there was trade or there was culture-contact. Doesn't matter: the date comes out about the same. The main correlation is with the Hoxne. In space this is Suffolk - reasonably close to Thetford. In time, matters more: the Late Antiquity.

The big hype is that the Thetford Treasure contains "pagan" ware. I will just post this. If you are thinking: if they're rich enough to have accumulated a Treasure, wouldn't there be imports, which would be of whatever religion; and wouldn't local sophisticates still do art referring to Greek myth, like Renaissance Popes might - then you have a brain to think with.

The only way the hype makes sense is if this ware cites specifically Roman cult imagery. Like signets of some god; perhaps beyond that Mercurial wanderer. Thetford has 22 rings and these seem Italian...

We can assume the interment was committed less to hide from a then-ineffectual Catholic Church than in advance of invasions from the wrong pagans.

BACKDATE 5/11