The Staffordshire Hoard

The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever found. In 2009 a man with a metal detector, working a field near Lichfield in England with permission, uncovered more than 4,000 pieces, almost all of it war-gear, sword fittings and helmet pieces of astonishing craftsmanship, torn from weapons and buried in the 600s. It rewrote what was known about the age of Beowulf. Now shared between the museums of Birmingham and Stoke. A field that looked like any other.