“It’s very obscure,” Lockwood says, “but at the same time it’s a bizarre holdover from a previous age that doesn’t seem like it should exist in the modern age, but it does.” “Some of the early broader roles are sort of swept away,” Lockwood adds, “so we’re left with treasure trove and investigating untimely deaths.” It is still up to coroners-who weren’t particularly associated with having medical knowledge until the 1800s-to distinguish between deaths accidental, natural, and foul, and to distinguish between trinket and treasure. “The responsibility for investigating treasure and wreck of the sea goes sort of hand-in-hand with the investigation of death. “The modern role is almost entirely focused on the investigation of deaths, but at the time revenue control was part of that,” says Matthew Lockwood, a historian at the University of Alabama and an expert in early British history, who wrote his dissertation on the coroner’s role in British life. They organized local juries and supervised county elections, looked into premature or suspicious deaths, and seized the assets of those who died with no clear heirs. In medieval rural England, coroners were the crown incarnate. “The etymology of the word coroner comes from ‘crown’ and ‘crowner,’ and for centuries, they’ve been the crown’s representative in the regions,” says Ian Richardson, the Treasure Registrar at the British Museum, which today houses the finds from Sutton Hoo. It was a spectacular find, but not treasure. Archaeologists excavated the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the 1930s. Hubert invented something called a coroner. Among the rules Hubert outlined in his Articles of Eyre was a new sort of county officer, one who could help settle local matters and, in the process, ensure a steady flow of revenue into the crown’s coffers. Few people were more qualified to orchestrate this managerial makeover than Walter Hubert, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The kingdom was in want of a bureaucratic upgrade if it was to survive. In 1194, Richard the Lionheart’s England was financially strapped by the Crusades abroad and a suite of issues at home. But through it all, the duty of declaring which uncovered objects make the cut has always fallen to the same people-coroners, the same ones who are responsible for determining causes of death. Defining some of these objects as “treasure” has historically provided a source of revenue for the kingdom, and today it is a vital step in ensuring the preservation of the country’s cultural heritage. Centuries-old objects turn up from under pastures in Sussex and wash up on the banks of the Thames in central London. There’s a lot of history in England, and much of it still lies under the earth. The find is priceless beyond measure, but one thing it is decidedly not is “treasure.” At least that’s what a local coroner-following seven centuries of precedent-officially determined. One of the most spectacular finds in the history of English archaeology, the burial contained no body, but was loaded with artifacts made of gold, silver, and bronze, from Byzantine silverware to a literally double-edged sword. The famous grave ship of Sutton Hoo was found, undisturbed, in a mound in East Anglia, England, in the 1930s.

Trove definition