[Illustration: Fig. 67.—Flat Arm Band found at Skaill (2¾ inches diameter).]
With these personal ornaments of various kinds, which constituted the bulk of the hoard, there was a small quantity of bullion, and a few coins.
The bullion consisted of a number of ingots of silver, some entire, others cut, and a quantity of fragments of brooches and arm-rings chopped up into small pieces, as if with an axe or chisel. The largest ingot is 3¼ inches in length, and weighs 1089 grains.
The coins were few—at least few were recovered—although from their small size and thinness they were more liable to be overlooked in the hasty and promiscuous grubbing of many treasure-seekers. One is a St. Peter’s penny struck at York, of tenth century date. Another is a penny of King Æthelstan (A.D. 925), struck at Leicester. All the others are Asiatic, of the time when the seat of the Mohammedan Caliphate was at Cufa or Bagdad. Three of these Cufic coins belong to the Abbaside Caliphs, and seven to the Samanian dynasty. They range in their dates between A.D. 887 and 945, and the places of mintage, still legible, are Al-shash, Bagdad, and Samarcand.
Let us now group the characteristics of this deposit. It is a hoard buried in the earth, but with no indication of its having been in any way connected with the rites of sepulture. It is a large hoard, altogether amounting to 16 lbs. in weight. It is entirely of silver, and consists of personal ornaments, ingots, and coins. The ornaments are brooches, neck rings, and arm rings. The brooches are of penannular form, but differ in their character from those we have learned to recognise as distinctively Celtic. The neck rings and arm rings present no features of a specially Celtic character. The coins are Cufic and Anglo-Saxon, dated mostly in the end of the ninth and the first half of the tenth centuries.