Isleham Hoard

The Isleham Hoard is a hoard of more than 6,500 pieces of worked and unworked bronze found in 1959 at Isleham near Ely in the English county of Cambridgeshire and dating from the Bronze Age.

The hoard is the largest Bronze Age hoard ever discovered in England and is one of the finest. It consists in particular of swords, spear-heads, arrows, axes, palstaves, knives, daggers, armour, decorative equipment (in particular for horses) and many fragments of sheet bronze[1] , all dating from the Wilburton-Wallington Phase of the late Bronze Age (about 1000 bc). The swords show holes where rivets or studs held the wooden hilts in place (studs were usually made of bronze except for commanders who had silver-studded swords or for a commander-in-chief who had a gold-studded sword). The greater part of these objects have been entrusted to St Edmundsbury Borough Council Heritage Service, some of which are on display at West Stow Anglo - Saxon Village outside Bury St Edmunds, while other items are within the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge.[2] In his book Where Troy once stood Iman Wilkens, using the hoard as argument, suggests that the Trojan war was fought in the fens. According to his work the Gogs were the location of the city of Troy, famous because of Homers tales.

See also

References

  1. ^ Hall, David (1994). Fenland survey : an essay in landscape and persistence / David Hall and John Coles. London; English Heritage. ISBN 1-85074-477-7. , p. 81-88
  2. ^ "Monument no. 377660". Pastscape. English Heritage. http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=377660&sort=4&search=all&criteria=isleham%20hoard&rational=q&recordsperpage=10. Retrieved 2010-07-14.