Following donations from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Staffordshire hoard will be saved for the nation & displayed in a museum in the region where it was found. This is great news for the preservation of Britain’s cultural heritage, but yet again I find the difference in opinions about retaining our heritage to the importance of others retaining their heritage astonishing.

From:
The Independent

23-03-2010
Staffordshire Hoard ‘saved for the nation’
By Danielle Dwyer, Press Association

The Staffordshire Hoard has been “saved for the nation” after a cash boost from a Government heritage fund, it was announced today.

The collection – the largest ever find of Anglo-Saxon gold – was unearthed on Staffordshire farmland by a metal detector enthusiast last year and later valued at £3.3 million.
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This (& many other articles) talk about the importance of the fight to keep the Staffordshire Hoard in Britain. When other countries ask for the return of their artefacts for similar reasons though, this is regularly described in a derogatory way with terms such as cultural nationalism.

From:
The Times

March 14, 2010
The long battle for the Staffordshire treasure hoard
For 1,400 years, a stash of Anglo-Saxon artefacts remained buried — until it was found last year by a man with a metal detector. It throws fascinating new light on clashes in the Dark Ages, but now we must win the fight to keep this precious hoard in Britain

It’s a misty dawn in Middle England, some time in the 7th century. A small band of armed men struggle up a wooded hill. At the summit they pause. While one keeps watch, the others tip their loot on to the ground. They divide up the jewels and coins, then they turn to the rest of the booty: swords, crosses, saddle fittings, which are mostly gold and exquisitely made. They hammer at them with stones and the hilts of their knives, they rip the pommels from the swords and stuff the blades into their jerkins, smash the helmets and bend the arms of the crosses until they look like nothing more than twisted pieces of metal. They stuff the small gold and bejewelled fragments into leather pouches, grub out a hole in the earth, and bury their cache. Then they disappear over the hill as swiftly as they came.
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