From the Silk Road to Scotland - incredible journey of star object of Galloway Hoard revealed - video Dailymotion

The Scotsman

t travelled half way around the world from lands far in the East, only to be buried in the deep south west of Scotland more than 1,000 years ago.  The incredible journey of the lidded vessel which contained many of the star objects of the Galloway Hoard - perhaps the most important haul of Viking-age silver ever found in this country - has now been revealed after conservators established the origin of the pot rammed with ample treasures.  New scientific analysis has confirmed that materials used to make the vessel - decorated in tigers, leopards, crowns and fire, originated in what is now central Iran.

Transcript

00:00I'm Martin Goldberg. I'm Principal Curator of Medieval Archaeology and History at National Museum Scotland.

00:08This is the last of our major reveals from the Galloway Horde Research Programme.

00:13This is the lidded vessel that has always sat at the very heart of the Horde

00:18and contained all of the most unusual and exotic items.

00:22So this object has been on a long journey over the last ten years.

00:26This is not what it looked like when it came out of the ground.

00:30But what you can see are the preserved remnants of the very fragile archaeological textiles

00:36that wrapped this vessel when it went into the ground a thousand years ago.

00:42Our first step in investigating the vessel was to have it 3D scanned

00:47so that we could try and see the decorated surface underneath those archaeological textiles.

00:53Our job is to both preserve it but also to do research on it.

00:58We wanted to record and identify the textiles but then the process of cleaning begins

01:05in order to reveal what we can of the decorated surface.

01:09So the technique that we used was laser cleaning

01:13and this allowed us to remove the green corrosion that was covering a lot of the silver surface of the vessel

01:20but also helped us to preserve the textiles that were adhering to the surface.

01:25So we were striking that careful balance between revealing and preservation.

01:30What we can now see on the decorated surface has enhanced that initial glimpse that we had from our 3D scans.

01:39We can see the Zoroastrian iconography that we first identified.

01:44The Zoroastrian iconography is inspired by the state religion of the Sasanian Empire

01:50that was centred on modern day Iran.

01:53That includes things like the fire stand and also some of the exotic creatures that we can see

01:59that look like leopards and tigers.

02:02But what that tells us is that this vessel has travelled thousands of miles to get to Galloway

02:08and is very very far away from where we would expect to find something like this.

02:13Further research using scientific techniques has looked at the origins of the silver and the yellow inlay on the vessel

02:22and this has allowed us to get even closer to the origin of where this vessel came from.

02:28The lead isotope signature of the metals that have made this vessel

02:33have been pinpointed to a mine that is in modern day Iran

02:37so that fits perfectly with our theory that this comes or was certainly inspired

02:43by the iconography of the Sasanian Empire.

02:47So people will be able to see this object on display for the very first time

02:52in the British Museum's Silk Roads exhibition from the 26th of September.

From the Silk Road to Scotland - incredible journey of star object of Galloway Hoard revealed

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