This article focuses on archaeological treasures, which can reveal interesting things about a culture. Hoards are often created to protect valuable items, and can be discovered by metal detectors or stumbled upon. Treasures are like time capsules, revealing a cross-section of a specific moment in time. There are different types of treasures, including loot, personal, merchant, and founder’s treasures.
The term “hoarding” is used in a number of ways, most commonly to describe a collection of objects or artifacts. This article by wiseGEEK focuses in particular on the so-called “archaeological treasures”, treasures excavated by archaeologists which can sometimes reveal very interesting things about a people and their culture. Several important treasures are displayed in museums as complete collections, and in other cases, a treasure may be broken down into various components and exhibited or studied in multiple places.
A typical archaeological treasure is buried with the intent of recovering it at a future date and usually contains a hodgepodge of items wrapped in cloth, leather, or other materials to make them easier to locate. Over time, the outer shell often decays completely and some items may migrate, causing the treasure to be spread over a large area. Treasures are often discovered by people who use metal detectors recreationally, and some very notable treasures have been discovered by farmers and gardeners who literally stumble upon them.
There are several reasons why items in a hoard may be unclaimed. Commonly, hoards were created to protect valuable items from marauders, pirates, or government officials, and their owners died before retrieving the items or conveying the hoard’s location. In other cases, someone might forget the location of a treasure or be unable to get back to it. In the case of votive cases, the objects are buried deliberately for religious reasons, with no intention of recovering the artifacts at a later time.
From an archaeologist’s point of view, a treasure is like a time capsule. It’s generally safe to assume that objects are contemporary with one another, so a treasure can reveal an interesting cross-section of a very specific moment in time. Especially in the case of a mixed hoard, it is possible to know which classes of society owned which objects and what kinds of things were considered highly valuable by people in the past.
There are a number of different types of treasures. The most famous is probably the “loot treasure”, otherwise known as a hidden treasure, consisting of various stolen and hidden items. A personal treasure consists of items of value to a person, which can range from keepsakes to money, while a merchant’s treasure is a collection of goods and other functional items. Collections of metalwork, raw or finished, are known as founder’s treasures.
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