I thought of titling this
post “Maybe I Should Buy Some English Land.” For these hoards of old coins are still being found in
England 1000 years and more after the fact. However, this latest 5000 coin find is exceptional.
The reason these caches
are still being found is there were so many of them in Early Medieval
England. There were few reliable
ways to store one’s wealth back then.
(I’ll leave aside the question of whether that is still the case.) So it was common practice to simply
bury wealth, particularly coins.
And it frequently
happened that buried hoards were never revisited. A soldier buried his coins before marching off to war, and
never returned. A family fleeing
before Vikings, buried what wealth they felt was not practical or safe to take with
them, but never returned to their cache.
Perhaps their flight was unsuccessful; or they never felt it safe enough
to retrieve their cache; or they just never got around to it. Thieves understandably concealed their
ill-gotten gain, and then received harsh and final justice in an attempt to add
to it.
And have you ever lost
something very important to you?
That was a problem back then as well.
So no telling how many
early medieval coin hoards still lie hidden in England.
Maybe I really should go
buy some English land….
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