All,
If you click here you will get to some local(ish) archaeology news of national importance. The so-called Watlington Hoard has re-written what we know about the Anglo-Saxons…
“This is an extraordinary find, one which re-writes Anglo-Saxon history,” Xa Sturgis, director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which now houses the coins, told Sky News. “The keeper of the coin room here came running up the stairs to tell me. The more they were excavated the more it became obvious how significant they are. These coins point to some sort of an alliance in the 870s between Alfred and Ceolwulf.” While Alfred is often described as the king who founded England, uniting Mercia and Wessex, very little is known of his rival Ceolwulf.
“These coins prove that there was a very real alliance between the two men at that time,” added Julian Baker, coin curator at the Ashmolean. “That alliance hasn’t survived in the historical record until now. Alfred manipulated history to put himself in a better light. To date, history has overemphasised Alfred’s record and almost completely neglected Ceolwulf.”
As such, this article is a good example of how far from being a static subject, historical ideas are always fluid and changing.
See what you think.
Mr Kydd.
