The hoard presents us with a startling number of unfamiliar images from the Anglo-Saxon past, not least in the new icon of treasure that it presents. As the descriptions of treasure and gift-giving in Beowulf so vividly remind us, the gaining of treasure, and its corollary, gift-giving, were major preoccupations for Anglo-Saxons and their northern European contemporaries, whether Clovis, showering the crowds in Tours with gold solidi when he was created consul in 508, Oswiu attempting to buy off Penda before the Battle of Winwæd with what Bede (HE III.24; Colgrave & Mynors 1969: 288–91) described as an incalculable and incredible store of royal treasures or the huge Danegelds extorted by Vikings in the tenth and early eleventh century. But until July 2009, the picture presented by the archaeological evidence for Anglo-Saxon treasure could hardly have been more different: the material remains of treasure with which we are familiar come overwhelmingly from high-status burials, or as individual gold finds without context, most of them the result of relatively recent metal-detecting activity. Only one seventh-century Anglo-Saxon gold hoard exists, from Crondall in Hampshire, dated to c. 640; but that is essentially a coin hoard, the only non-numismatic items two small clasps which must have fastened the purse or satchel containing the coins.

A large and intriguing collection of gold and silver fragments dating mainly to the seventh century AD was found in the parish of Ogley Hay near the south Staffordshire border (England) in 2009 by Mr Terry Herbert, while using a metal detector. With its peculiar composition and uncertain context, the origins and purpose of the Staffordshire Hoard currently remain something of a puzzle.

The Staffordshire (Ogley Hay) hoard was found on the 5–10 July 2009 by Mr Terry Herbert while metal-detecting on arable land at a site in south Staffordshire in the English Midlands (Figure 1).Mr Herbert contacted Duncan Slarke, the Portable Antiquities Scheme's Finds Liaison Officer for Staffordshire and the West Midlands, who visited the finder at his home and prepared an initial list of 244 bags of finds. These were then taken to Birmingham Museum and HM Coroner was informed. Duncan Slarke also contacted the relevant archaeological authorities including English Heritage, the Staffordshire Historic Environment Record, the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Portable Antiquities & Treasure Department at the British Museum. A meeting was held in Birmingham on 21 July at which it was agreed that the controlled recovery of the remaining objects of the hoard and an archaeological investigation of the findspot was a priority. It was also agreed that one of the Portable Antiquities Scheme's National Advisors, Dr Kevin Leahy, should compile a hand-list of finds in preparation for the Coroner's Inquest.

The origin of the English is an interesting problem – and not only for them. In one short century, the evidence from texts, burial, artefacts, stable isotopes and now DNA provides several different answers to the question of whether England was invaded by Germans in the fifth century and if so in what manner. The rigorous approach by our authors tips the balance back in favour of a population changing its cultural allegiance – rather than being physically overwhelmed – but, as they emphasise, any new reading must depend on a very high level of archaeological precision – perhaps only now coming within reach.

Excavations at Flixborough, Lincolnshire (1989–91) revealed an important Anglo-Saxon settlement. Here the various interpretations are discussed, ranging from monastic to ‘magnate’.

The modern plan of the west Midlands city of Worcester, like so many in England, hides a series of ancient towns under the standing streets. Archaeological and historical exploration, and the old topography that shows itself in modern plots and street lines, make possible the recovery of the early pattern.

Where London was in the Roman and later medieval periods is clear enough: largely in the walled city, now under the modern financial district that is the City of London. But what of the period between? New evidence is assessed on this longstanding problem.

The Northumbrian monastic communities, and their crafts, are fundamental to the study of 7th-century Britain. New excavation has revealed significant evidence for the community at Hartlepool, as well as moulds and crucibles from fine metal-working on the site.

One of the few things to have remained very little changed in the City of London for nearly one thousand years was the position of most of its streets and lanes. Unfortunately this is no longer true, and in the past few decades large numbers of medieval streets have disappeared from the map for ever to be replaced by characterless dual-carriageways that now slice through the City. Not only do these new routes replace the earlier ones, but at the same time they swallow up and destroy all the surrounding side lanes and many of the old alignments disappear. Equally, property boundaries which may also have survived for at least 800 years now disappear for ever in very large redevelopments, and nowhere is this whole process more clearly seen than in the vast swathe cut for the new southern dualcarriageway that has replaced Thames Street. The whole of the western part of Upper Thames Street, with its adjoining side lanes, has been physically removed, to be replaced by a tunnelled dualcarriageway further to the south. For well over half a mile the central part of Thames Street is now so wide that it has engulfed properties on its north side, while the eastern end from the Custom House to Tower Hill, with its surrounding redevelopments, has had all signs of the medieval topography removed except for All Hallows church with its unique Anglo-Saxon arch (Taylor & Taylor, 1965, 39-400)

When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, about the middle of the fifth century, they came as barbarians in the proper and Roman sense of the word, illiterate and unpolished. At the beginning, too, their religion was a paganism at variance with imperial Christianity. Yet they cannot have been the blundering creatures they are sometimes taken for: within a few generations this assortment of tribes had produced scholarship of European standing, in the persons of Aldhelm and Bede, and as to the decorative arts their jewelry and illumination of manuscripts—not forgetting Irish influence—were a match for anyone in the western world. Fierce and warlike at first, guilty of unprovoked aggression, most of them soon settled down to become peaceful farmers.

The scientific study of rural settlement in Britain was initiated in 1883 when Seebohm published The English Village Community. In this study he argued for a continuity between the Roman villa and the Anglo-Saxon vi1lage. In 1897, however, Maitland published his Domesday Book and Beyond by way of rejoinder to Seebohm’s views. Thereafter it became customary for historians, geographers and archaeologists alike to regard the nucleated settlements of the English lowlands as Anglo-Saxon creations, implanted by groups of free English settlers in a countryside emptied, by force or fear, of its Romano-British occupants. Of late this hypothesis, which lays so much stress on Germanic as distinct from earlier achievements, has come under criticism from several quarters. Archaeologists are increasingly conscious of the survival into the Dark Ages of a British tradition in ornamentation even in England. As a philologist, Jackson has adduced sufficient linguistic evidence to undermine, even for eastern Britain, the old theory of the nearcomplete extermination of the Celts and has argued for a bilingual phase when English settlement was being effected. On a narrow front in the Cotswolds the historian, Finberg, has cogently portrayed various facets of continuity between the Roman villa and the adjoining village at Withington. On a broader front, Aston has demonstrated the limitations of Maitland’s thesis on the origin of the manor; he suggests that the primary Anglo-Saxon penetration of England was carried out not by freemen, each owning one hide of land, but under lordly direction and was therefore organized by large estates. The vacuum created by this sapping of the traditional view of Anglo-Saxon settlement has not been filled by the adoption of a convincing alternative hypothesis. This absence of an alternative is largely due to fundamental misconceptions about the organization of that Celtic society which occupied England before the advent of either Romans or Saxons. The purpose of this article is to remove these misconceptions and, by so doing, to show that the basic patterns of settlement distribution in the English lowlands date from at least Celtic times.