Galloway Hoard - an interview with Dr Martin Goldberg

#AntiqueMasterpieces"Dr Martin Goldberg from National Museums Scotland talks about a key treasure from the Galloway Hoard.

New research and conservation efforts have unveiled the Iranian origin of a lidded vessel that held many of the unique treasures in the Galloway Hoard. This revelation comes just in time for the vessel’s public debut, marking the 10th anniversary of the hoard’s discovery.

The Galloway Hoard, discovered in 2014 in southwest Scotland, has become renowned for its collection of Viking-Age treasures. When unearthed, the lidded vessel was found wrapped in rare textiles, themselves an extraordinary survival from its burial around AD 900. These textiles have been preserved alongside the vessel, allowing researchers to conduct further analysis while protecting its historical integrity.

Through painstaking conservation, intricate details of the vessel’s design have been revealed for the first time since it was buried about 1,100 years ago. Previously visible only through x-rays, laser cleaning has exposed new imagery on the vessel’s surface, featuring crowns, fire altars, leopards, and tigers—iconography that hints at connections with Zoroastrianism, the state religion of the Sasanian Empire, which existed in modern-day Iran before the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries."