Description

Hoards are among the most enigmatic of archaeological finds. The term 'hoard' itself has been applied to different assemblages across space and time, from the Stone Age into the modern era, with an inventory that typically includes artefacts made of valuable raw materials, to which significant symbolic meanings can also be assigned. Archaeologists have been trying to understand this phenomenon for much of the last century, sometimes emphasizing the universal nature of hoards, but more typically focusing on specific regions, chronologies, and finds. They have, for the most part, used results derived from typolo-chronological methods. Contemporary archaeology has, however, developed a broad spectrum of paradigms and methods, and hoardresearch in the twenty-first century draws on an increasingly wide range of approaches. This volume presents examples of research that make use of these multi-faceted approaches through a focus on European hoards of metal objects dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages. The contributors to this volume make use of diverse methods, among them archaeometallurgical analyses, studies of use- and production-wear, destruction patterns, and landscape archaeology, but together, their common denominator is the search for a methodological toolkit that will allow researchers to better understand the phenomenon of hoard-deposition more broadly.