800 Yr Old Byzantine Jewelry, Coins Cache Discovered, Viking Trade Hub, Amateur Metal Detectorist

Last edited Sat Mar 18, 2023, 10:29 AM - Edit history (1)

- 'A German Man Just Learning How to Use a Metal Detector Uncovered a Hoard of Buried Byzantine Jewelry & Silver Coins.' The discovery was made in what once was a Viking Age trade settlement. Artnet.com, March 15, 2023.

A 800-year-old cache of gold jewelry and silver coins was discovered in northern Germany. And where there’s newly unearthed gold, there’s quite likely an amateur metal detectorist who located it.

Nicki Andreas Steinmann was a trainee learning how to use a metal detector with an instructor when, while walking a tract of land close to Hedeby and Danewerk World Heritage Site in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, the pair stumbled upon gold artifacts and coins. Once unearthed, the hoard, as indicated by the coins found stacked upon one another, looked to have been buried all at once. (Photo: Nicki Andreas Steinmann, the trainee metal detectorist, with his discovery. Photo: ALSH).

The detectorists reported their find in late February to the State Archaeological Department of Schleswig-Holstein (ALSH), which conducted the analysis of the artifacts.

“The hoard consisted of two very high quality gold earrings set with semi-precious stones, a gilded pseudo-coin brooch, two gilded stone-studded finger rings, a ring fragment, a small formerly gilded perforated disc, a ring brooch, and about 30 silver coins, some of them heavily fragmented,” Ulf Ickerodt, the director of ALSH, told Live Science. The team has dated the two earrings, surprisingly well-preserved, to around 1100 due to their apparent Byzantine style and craftsmanship. One of the brooches is also an imitation of an Islamic gold dinar, dating it to the Almohad caliphate between the 12th and 13th centuries.

The 30 coins are linked to the reign of Valdemar II, the Danish king who ruled from 1170 to 1241. Fragments of fabric found with the coins suggest that they were once buried in a bag. That the stash should contain Mediterranean jewelry and Danish currency makes sense for the area of Hedeby, once a Viking Age trading hub. “An extensive north-south and east-west trade network developed here since the early Middle Ages, in which the Mediterranean region, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea were integrated,” explained Ickerodt...https://news.artnet.com/art-world/trainee-metal-detectorist-gold-silver-hoard-germany-alsh-2267848
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- History of Byzantine Jewelry

From chunky necklaces to gem-studded brooches, the Byzantines held nothing back when making jewelry. Their jewelry even influenced the production of personal decorations throughout the medieval world, from the Carolingians to the Ottonians. Byzantine jewelry embodies influences from Northern Africa and other countries like Russia and Greece. Artisans also portrayed their skills with religious symbols like the cross.

The Byzantine Empire had affluence due to the numerous gold mines within its borders. It was also an ideal location for trade...https://thearchaeologicalbox.com/history-of-byzantine-jewelry/
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- Byzantine Art

Byzantine art comprises the body of Christian Greek artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of Rome & lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still imprecise. Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Islamic states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture & art for centuries afterward.

- Byzantine art: One of the most famous of the surviving Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople – the image of Christ Pantocrator on the walls, c. 1261. A number of contemporary states with the Byzantine Empire were culturally influenced by it without actually being part of it (the 'Byzantine commonwealth'). These included the Rus, as well as some non-Orthodox states like the Republic of Venice, which separated from the Byzantine Empire in the 10th cent., & the Kingdom of Sicily, which had close ties to the Byzantine Empire & had also been a Byzantine territory until the 10th cent. with a large Greek-speaking population persisting into the 12th cent.

Other states having a Byzantine artistic tradition, had oscillated throughout the Middle Ages between being part of the Byzantine Empire & having periods of independence, such as Serbia & Bulgaria.

After the fall of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 1453, art produced by Eastern Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire was often called "post-Byzantine." Certain artistic traditions that originated in the Byzantine Empire, particularly in regard to icon painting & church architecture, are maintained in Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia & other Eastern Orthodox countries to the present day.
.. The so-called "minor arts" were very important in Byzantine art & luxury items, including ivories carved in relief as formal presentation Consular diptychs or caskets such as the Veroli casket, hardstone carvings, enamels, glass, jewelry, metalwork, & figured silks were produced in large quantities throughout the Byzantine era... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_art