A hoard or "wealth deposit" is an archaeological term for a collection of valuable objects or artifacts , sometimes purposely buried in the ground, in which case it is sometimes also known as a cache . This would usually be with the intention of later recovery by the hoarder; hoarders sometimes died or were unable to return for other reasons (forgetfulness or physical displacement from its location) before retrieving the hoard, and these surviving hoards might then be uncovered much later by metal detector hobbyists, members of the public, and archaeologists .
29-580: 52°20′35″N 0°24′40″E / 52.343°N 0.411°E / 52.343; 0.411 The Isleham Hoard is a hoard of more than 6,500 pieces of worked and unworked bronze , dating from the Bronze Age , found in 1959 by William 'Bill' Houghton and his brother, Arthur, at Isleham , near Ely , in the English county of Cambridgeshire . It is the largest Bronze Age hoard ever discovered in England and one of
58-458: A counter-attack. Raiders must travel swiftly and are generally too lightly equipped and supported to be able to hold ground. A raiding group may consist of combatants specially trained in this tactic, such as commandos , or as a special mission assigned to any regular troops . Raids are often a standard tactic in irregular warfare , employed by warriors , guerrilla fighters or other irregular military forces. Some raids are large, for example
87-445: A finished state. These were probably buried with the intention to be recovered at a later time. A merchant's hoard is a collection of various functional items which, it is conjectured, were buried by a traveling merchant for safety, with the intention of later retrieval. A personal hoard is a collection of personal objects buried for safety in times of unrest. A hoard of loot is a buried collection of spoils from raiding and
116-456: A raid on Saint-Nazaire – and the Dieppe Raid , which was a large scale raid employing about 6,000 soldiers, over 200 ships and 74 squadrons of aircraft intended to take and hold Dieppe sufficiently to cause sufficient destruction to the port. Paratroopers and glider -borne troops have been landed by aircraft on raids, including offensive counter-air missions such as those carried out by
145-429: A temple or church become the property of that institution, and may be used to its benefit. Raid (military) Raiding , also known as depredation , is a military tactic or operational warfare " smash and grab " mission which has a specific purpose. Raiders do not capture and hold a location, but quickly retreat to a previous defended position before enemy forces can respond in a coordinated manner or formulate
174-564: Is known in Arabic as ghazzu . Such activity was still noticed by J. S. Buckingham in 1820s Palestine not only among nomadic Bedouin, but also among the nominally sedentary villagers of er-Riha (Jericho), who left the little land cultivation he observed to women and children, while men spent most of their time riding through the plains and engaging in "robbery and plunder", their main and most profitable activity. The Islamic prophet Muhammad made frequent use of raiding tactics. His first use of raids
203-500: Is more in keeping with the popular idea of " buried treasure ". Votive hoards are different from the above in that they are often taken to represent permanent abandonment, in the form of purposeful deposition of items, either all at once or over time for ritual purposes, without intent to recover them . Furthermore, votive hoards need not be "manufactured" goods, but can include organic amulets and animal remains. Votive hoards are often distinguished from more functional deposits by
232-761: The Austronesian ethnic groups in Island Southeast Asia that converted to Islam shortly before and during the Colonial Era . However, unlike pre-colonial raids, these raids were specifically to acquire slaves . Unlike the pre-colonial practices of indentured servitude (like in alipin ) which was more a temporary form of punishment, captives from these more recent raids followed the Islamic practice of chattel slavery . They had little chances of returning to their home settlements, unless ransomed, and were instead sold on
261-638: The First Raid on Banu Thalabah , a tribe already aware of the impending attack. So they lay in wait for the Muslims, and when Muhammad ibn Maslamah arrived at the site, 100 men of the Banu Thalabah ambushed them, while the Muslims were making preparation to sleep, and after a brief resistance killed all of Muhammad ibn Maslamah's men. Muhammad ibn Maslamah pretended to be dead. A Muslim who happened to pass that way found him and assisted him to return to Medina. The raid
290-688: The Mongol invasion of Central Asia . Examples of lesser scale raids include those staged by the Cossacks of the Zaporizhian Sich , the Grande Armée , and cavalry raids that took place during the American Civil War such as Morgan's Raid , and numerous examples of small group raids behind enemy lines that have taken place throughout all periods of history. In the operational level of war , raids were
319-586: The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge in Cambridge . Hoard Hoards provide a useful method of providing dates for artifacts through association as they can usually be assumed to be contemporary (or at least assembled during a decade or two), and therefore used in creating chronologies. Hoards can also be considered an indicator of the relative degree of unrest in ancient societies. Thus conditions in 5th and 6th century Britain spurred
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#1732851905103348-696: The Sullivan Expedition . The purposes of a raid may include: Among many tribal societies, raiding was the most common and lethal form of warfare. Taking place at night, the goal was to catch the enemy sleeping to avoid casualties to the raiding party. Cattle raiding was a major feature of Irish society in the Iron Age and forms the central plot of the historical epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (English: Cattle Raid of Cooley ). The traditional habit of Bedouin tribes of raiding other tribes, caravans, or settlements
377-857: The Teishin Shudan and Giretsu Kuteitai commandos. In the modern era, the helicopter, allowing for both insertion and extraction, offers a superior method of raid transportation, although it comes at the cost of noise. During the Second World War, several air-landed raids were undertaken, including the German glider-borne raid on Fort Eben-Emal in Belgium in 1940, and the British Operation Colossus and Operation Biting , which were raids in Italy and France in 1941 and 1942. The Royal Air Force first used
406-561: The Visayans . Participating in or defending against these raids were part of the duties of the noble ( maginoo ) and warrior castes (like the timawa and maharlika ). The main purpose of the raids were to gain prestige in combat, to pillage , and to capture hostages. Participation and prowess in these raids were recorded in the widespread practice of full-body tattooing ( batok ). Raids were usually seaborne, and coastal communities had sentinels that watch for possible raids. When spotted, it
435-671: The slave markets . These kinds of raids were especially prevalent in the Sulu and Celebes Seas and has continued into modern-day piracy. In the early Middle Ages , Viking raiders from Scandinavia attacked the British Isles , France and Spain , attacking coastal and riverside targets. Much Viking raiding was carried out as a private initiative with a few ships, usually to gain loot, but much larger fleets were also involved, often as intent on extorting protection money (English: Danegeld ) as looting and pillaging. Raiding did not cease with
464-1017: The Dutch executed the Raid on the Medway during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Dutch Raid on North America during the Third Anglo-Dutch War . During the Second World War, the British set up the Combined Operations Headquarters to organise harassing raids against the Germans in Europe. The first operation conducted by a "commando" formation, known as Operation Ambassador , took place in July 1940, but it
493-959: The burial of hoards, of which the most famous are the Hoxne Hoard , Suffolk; the Mildenhall Treasure , the Fishpool Hoard , Nottinghamshire, the Water Newton hoard, Cambridgeshire, and the Cuerdale Hoard , Lancashire, all preserved in the British Museum . Prudence Harper of the Metropolitan Museum of Art voiced some practical reservations about hoards at the time of the Soviet exhibition of Scythian gold in New York City in 1975. Writing of
522-748: The decline of the Viking threat in the 11th century. It remained a common element of the medieval naval warfare. Extensive naval raiding was carried out by all sides during the Hundred Years War , often involving privateers such as John Hawley of Dartmouth or the Castilian Pero Niño . In the Mediterranean, raiding using oared galleys was common throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance and
551-517: The devastation of whole regions, such as that carried out by the Black Prince in Southern France in 1355 . This last is notable not just for its success and scope but the fact that the raiders deliberately captured records in order to carry out a post-operational analysis of the impact of the raid on the enemy economy. The largest raids in history were the series undertaken during and following
580-666: The finest. It consists in particular of swords, spear-heads, arrows, axes, palstaves , knives, daggers, armour, decorative equipment (in particular for horses) and many fragments of sheet bronze, all dating from the Wilburton-Wallington Phase of the late Bronze Age (about 1000 BCE ). The swords show holes where rivets or studs held the wooden hilts in place. The greater part of these objects have been entrusted to St Edmundsbury Borough Council Heritage Service and some are on display at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village outside Bury St Edmunds , while other items are held by
609-422: The nature of the goods themselves (from animal bones to diminutive artifacts), the places buried (being often associated with watery places, burial mounds and boundaries), and the treatment of the deposit (careful or haphazard placement and whether ritually destroyed/broken). Valuables dedicated to the use of a deity (and thus classifiable as "votive") were not always permanently abandoned. Valuable objects given to
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#1732851905103638-523: The original group. Such "dealer's hoards" can be highly misleading, but better understanding of archaeology amongst collectors, museums and the general public is gradually making them less common and more easily identified. Hoards may be of precious metals , coinage , tools or less commonly, pottery or glass vessels. There are various classifications depending on the nature of the hoard: A founder's hoard contains broken or unfit metal objects, ingots , casting waste, and often complete objects, in
667-775: The precursors in the development of the Operational Manoeuvre Groups in the Soviet Army as early as the 1930s. Raiding by sea was known at the time of the Pharaohs , when the shipborne forces of the Sea Peoples caused serious disruption to the economies of the eastern Mediterranean . In pre-colonial thalassocracies in the islands of the Philippines , sea raids ( mangayaw ) and land wars ( mangubat ), were regular seasonal activities by warring polities, particularly among
696-615: The so-called "Maikop treasure" (acquired from three separate sources by three museums early in the twentieth century, the Berliner Museen , the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology , and the Metropolitan Museum, New York), Harper warned: By the time "hoards" or "treasures" reach museums from the antiquities market, it often happens that miscellaneous objects varying in date and style have become attached to
725-617: Was a small-scale operation that resulted in negligible success. The next major raid was Operation Claymore , which was launched in March 1941 against the Lofoten Islands . Throughout the war there were many other operations of varied size, ranging from small scale operations like those undertaken by Z Special Unit against the Japanese in the Pacific, such as Project Opossum , to Operation Chariot –
754-613: Was during the caravan raids , and his first successful raid was the Nakhla raid . In January 624 Muhammad ordered this raid to attack a Quraysh caravan and gather information. During the Invasion of Thi Amr he ordered a raid on the Banu Muharib and Banu Talabah tribes after he received intelligence that they were allegedly going to raid the outskirts of Medina . One person was captured by Muslims during this raid. In August 627 he ordered
783-723: Was particularly a feature of the wars between the Christian powers and the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Raiding formed a major component of English naval strategy in the Elizabethan era, with attacks on the Spanish possessions in the New World . A major raid on Cadiz to destroy shipping being assembled for the Spanish Armada was carried out by Sir Francis Drake in 1587. Similarly
812-564: Was preferable for the defenders to meet the attackers at sea in ship-to-ship combat ( bangga ) rather than engage them on land. The raids had strict codes of conduct on the treatment of captives. People who surrendered were spared, to be ransomed or to work under temporary indentured servitude as alipin then set free. Anyone who kills a captive is required to pay their value, or risk becoming an alipin themselves. Higher-ranked captives were treated well and were usually ransomed by relatives. The practice of seaborne raids also continued among
841-586: Was unsuccessful. Small scale raiding warfare was common in Western European warfare of the Middle Ages . Much of a professional soldiers' time could be spent in "little war", carrying out raids or defending against them. Typical of this style of warfare was the mounted raid or chevauchée , popular during the Hundred Years War . Chevauchées varied in size from a few hundred men to armies of thousands, and could range in scope from attacks on nearby enemy areas to
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