The Watlington Hoard: Coinage, Kings and the Viking Great Army in Oxfordshire, AD 875-880

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With contributions by Ryan Lavelle, James Mather, Emma Corke, Philippa Pearce, Alexandra Baldwin, Helen Ward, Jane Kershaw, Simon Coupland and Julian Baker. The Watlington Hoard was discovered in southern Oxfordshire in 2015 by a metal-detectorist, and acquired by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2017. A nationally-important find of coinage and metalwork, and the first major Viking-Age hoard from the county, it dates from the late 870s, a fundamental and tumultuous period in Britain’s history. The contents of the hoard include a highly significant collection of over 200 silver pennies, mostly of Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, and Ceolwulf II, king of Mercia, transforming our understanding of the coinage in this period, and 23 silver and gold pieces of contemporary metalwork much of which was derived from Scandinavia. Presenting the complete publication of the objects and coins in the Watlington Hoard – including an important re-assessment of the coinage of the late 870s – the authors discuss its wider implications for our understanding of hoarding in late 9th-century southern Britain, interactions between the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, and the movements of the Viking Great Army after the Battle of Edington in 878. The book also relates another side to the hoard’s story, beginning with its discovery and excavation, charting its path through the conservation work and acquisition by the Ashmolean Museum to the public outreach projects which ran alongside the scholarly research into the hoard. List of Figures and Image Credits List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements xi Foreword xiii List of Abbreviations xi Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. The Watlington Hoard uncovered: from discovery to acquisition and beyond 2.1 Finding the Watlington Hoard 2.2 The excavation and lifting of the Watlington Hoard 2.3 The Table-Top Excavation of the Watlington Hoard Soil Block: observations and inferences 2.4 Further Conservation of the Watlington Hoard 2.5 Public-engagement with the Watlington Hoard: nationally important archaeology for all Chapter 3. The archaeology and landscape of the Upper Thames Valley in the 9th century Chapter 4. Oxfordshire, Wessex, and Mercia in the Age of Alfred the Great Chapter 5. The coinage of Wessex and Mercia, c.875–79: Chapter 6. The coins of the Watlington Hoard Chapter 7. The non-numismatic objects of the Watlington hoard Chapter 8. Money in southern England in the 870s in the light of the Watlington hoard Chapter 9. The Watlington Hoard in Context Catalogue 1. The non-numismatic objects Catalogue 2. The coins Appendix 1. A revised checklist of finds of Two Emperors and Cross-and-Lozenge type coins Appendix 2. A visual summary guide to the classification of the Two Emperors and Cross-and-Lozenge type pennies Appendix 3. The moneyers of the Two Emperors and Cross-and-Lozenge type pennies Appendix 4. Concordance table showing the spellings of moneyer’s names Bibliography