... dreams of Beowulf, baubles and bullion ....

... I know by now you've all heard about the metal detector hobbyist who discovered fifteen hundred pieces of ornate "dark ages" gold and silver in a grassy field in Staffordshire, UK ...

... yeh yeh!, there's palpable excitement in the world of Anglo-Saxon archaeology right now, so, count me present! ... because ...













... some thirty-plus years ago I signed up to study Geography at Nottingham University and blithely opted to read Archaeology too ... towards a joint degree ... in effect fusing two interests which remain with me today but have little direct relevance to my eventual career in film and television ... I may never understand why I didn't go for a drama course ... it wasn't touted as much of an option back then but that's no excuse 'cos it's not like Geog/Arch was ... uknowwaddamsayin'? ...

... from mi eye deh a mi knee I've known there must be valuable items from times gone by to be found in hidden locations ... this, and the grounding corroboration of digging up the past, is a continuing interest which draws me to that knowledge ... it was a long dusty bush walk to the Arawak Museum near Central Village but for an adventurous country boy with a lifetime subscription to National Geographic and a keen interest in "the bigger picture" it made a perfect pilgrimage ... situated on the site of an Arawak/Taino settlement on a commercial white marl deposit the under-appreciated destination held great fascination for me ... the archaeologists on-site encouraged my visits ... I watched them scratch and sieve the soil for significance ... layer by layer the middens gave up the bones, pottery and tools that told broad stories of the people who once lived there ...

... additionally, from an upstairs balcony at the house where I grew up ... in St. Jago Heights near Spanish Town, Jamaica ... I could see the Kingston deepwater harbor in the eastern distance and the low glow of Port Royal, pirate capital of the world at one point, luminating a corner of the night horizon in the right conditions ... family visits to the restored Rodney Arms at Port Henderson provided an easy setting in which to conjure mental images of doubloons and pieces-of-eight ...












... more recently, visits to Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbor, Antigua, the only restored Georgian site of its kind in the world, keeps my nerd-brain asking where I would have hidden the stash if I was dying of scurvy ...

... like so many dreamers and romantics I had early fantasies about finding lost or hidden treasures ... in the Caribbean there's much fantasy fodder with all the rum-soaked lore on the subject, sunstroked sailors concealing scribbled parchments where "X" marks the spot ... rubies, diamonds, strings of pearls and ingots of gold, not to mention the many beaches and caves where all the jewel-stuffed chests are supposed to be buried ...

... during some time spent in Grand Cayman decades ago I befriended Karen, daughter of well-known Florida salvager Art McKee ... retrieving relics and riches can be a family business and she could tell a story or two about real treasures ... and, with the history of trade, exploration, privateering, warfare and weather in the region, her's wasn't the only family in that biz ...

... Terry Herbert, our newly-rich hero in England who poked around for eighteen years before locating this massively important hoard, and professional salvagers bring this fantasy to life with every find ... my own personal-best discovery came when I uncovered the skull of a prehistoric deer with a sawn-off antler on a field-trip excavation near Cheltenham in Gloucester ... I was elated ... these things are relative you see ...














... the less-than-reverential looking Nottingham University trio pictured here circa 1977 in the ruins of Roman-era latrines on dreary Hadrian's Wall, apparently conducting some sort of disrespectful student ritual, might have been seen digging in the mud if there were a few bits of gilded gold scattered around ... mostly though, finding ancient pricelessness remains the stuff of dreams, good fortune and perseverance ...

... my gratitude to the custodians at - http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/ for proliferating the images of the freshly recovered, still-caked-in-dirt Anglo-Saxon artifacts on the worldwide web ... wouldn't Beowulf of antiquity be bewildered by the ubiquity of the internet ...