Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard

The Galloway hoard is the richest, most varied and well-preserved collection of precious and exotic objects surviving from Viking-age Britain and Ireland. Buried around AD 900, it is both Scotland's earliest Viking-age silver bullion hoard and the largest collection of gold surviving from that period in Britain and Ireland. Beyond the silver, familiar from most Viking-age hoards, and the much rarer gold, is an unprecedented array of inorganic materials such as bronze, glass, and rock crystal, entangled with the outstandingly rare preservation of organic materials (wood, leather, wool, linen, and silk). For example: a gold-mounted rock-crystal jar, likely to originate from the Byzantine Empire or perhaps beyond in the Islamic caliphate, is wrapped in several layers of textile including Scotland's earliest examples of silk; both this exotic fabric and the crystal jar could have travelled thousands of miles to reach Scotland.

Most hoards are usually interpreted as buried wealth, with the focus on events surrounding the moment of burial. The Galloway hoard challenges this view, and presents a rare opportunity to ask in much more detail about: how, and why, people assembled and collected hoards during the Viking Age? Four distinct caches within the Galloway hoard, exceptionally preserved with associated textiles, leather wrappings and a wooden box, take us beyond the usual perspective of hoards as a single mass of objects. Through a range of digital imaging techniques, scientific analysis and radiocarbon dating we will piece together clues from the history (biographies) of objects in order to examine the process of assembling the different parts of this spectacularly rich collection in the years (and perhaps even centuries) before its final burial.

This project brings together expertise in hoards and hoarding at National Museums Scotland and archaeological textiles and leather at University of Glasgow. Three Postdoctoral Research Assistants will tackle different aspects of the hoard: the silver which forms the bulk of the contents; the gold, glass, rock crystal and other inorganic materials; and the 250 detached fragments of organic material (mostly textiles). The latter will be identified, analysed and mapped back within the four caches, especially the wrapped lidded vessel containing complex bundles. Once recorded and studied these organic fragments will then form the basis for a fine-grained radiocarbon dating programme by Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC). Integrating this with all the other project findings will produce rare insights into the biographies of the many objects and the accumulation of this hoard before its final deposition. We will be collaborating with a range of specialist institutions. The breadth and depth of the contextual setting of the Galloway hoard stretching from Britain to the Byzantine Empire, and perhaps beyond, will attract international specialists to five workshops:1) Wrapping and Reliquaries; 2)Silk and International Connections; 3) Late Anglo-Saxon Metalwork; 4) Viking-age Gold; 5) Mixed Materials, Exotica, Curios and Heirlooms.

Originating from distant lands, accumulated over many years, and containing sacred and secular items, the objects, bundles and composition of the Galloway hoard has currently unrealised potential to challenge our understanding of what constitutes a hoard in Early Medieval Europe and beyond. The significance of the Galloway hoard extends beyond the Viking Age, not just because of its international context, but because of its exceptional preservation. This significance will be assessed in a final symposium focusing on new approaches to assembling and collecting hoards. Key outputs will include two books from the workshops and symposium, targeted journal articles, an exhibition in four venues around Scotland accompanied by public and schools programmes, rich digital media activity and dedicated pages on National Museums Scotland's website.

In 2017, the PI (Goldberg) spearheaded a fundraising campaign for £1.98 million to acquire the Galloway hoard for the nation, in accordance with the Treasure Trove process. The National Museums Scotland (NMS) campaign was generously supported by the National Heritage Memorial Fund (£1million), the Art Fund (£400,000) and the Scottish Government (£150,000), but it was hundreds of individual donations that made up the total. Central to the campaign was an exhibition in NMS, visited by thousands of people, with the PI giving daily tours for 6 months. Social media reached over 750,000 people with 471,128 viewing 17 Facebook posts, 51,948 page views to all Hoard web-pages with five videos (including two live broadcasts) achieving 100,050 views. People responded to the call that: "With your support, the precious items in the Hoard - some of which have never before been found in Britain - can speak to us across the centuries and teach us things we've never imagined about our ancestors, history and heritage" (Galloway Hoard Appeal, NMS). It is now the sincere intention of this project to fulfil that promise.

Having garnered local, national and international support amongst the general public and academic communities for the research potential of the hoard, this project will maintain this enthusiasm by extending the available data and presenting it to the public through a touring exhibition, presentations, schools engagement and digital media.

An "Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard" exhibition will originate in Edinburgh and then tour to Kirkcudbright, responding to demand from local communities close to where the hoard was discovered, and also to Aberdeen and Dundee. The digital content of the exhibition will be updated for each venue based on the on-going research and supported by public lectures from the project team, and school activities. These museums and galleries, and the communities they serve will reap the benefits of international standard research in material culture studies. A public programme of talks and tours, (in real-time, videoed and archived on-line) will spotlight the on-going AHRC research for visitors to NMS and the touring venues, as well as people around the UK who cannot come to see the hoard itself on display.

The "Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard" project will also have an impact beyond these shores to an even greater range of people around the world who are fascinated with the Viking Age. As well as people from across the UK and Ireland, the exhibition at NMS will attract a high proportion of international visitors, especially during the Edinburgh Festival. However, digital outputs, the on-line presence of this project, and the variety of dissemination channels will extend the reach of this research further to international audiences. An annual update of the project will be presented to the public at NMS as part of Scottish Archaeology Month.

The long-term legacy of this AHRC research will be in the displays of Galloway hoard material at Kirkcudbright Art Gallery, the closest appropriate venue to where the hoard was discovered, and in the next decade the Galloway hoard will become a centre-piece of the transformation of the new permanent galleries in the National Museum of Scotland.

"Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard" will generate new information about hoards, why people assembled such collections and how these can contribute to our understanding of the past in surprising ways. This National Museums Scotland partnership with the University of Glasgow puts this project in a unique position to create and communicate this knowledge to both non-academic and expert audiences. Our research on this collection of mixed cultural origin, accumulated over generations, and travelling great distances has the potential to reveal new insights about the world during the Viking Age and the development of national histories and identities at a crucial point during the 10th century AD.