NETFLIX’S star-studded film The Dig highlights the exciting discovery of a great Saxon treasure at Sutton Hoo in 1939. A few years earlier in 1932 Winchester had its own moment of excitement when excavation at Oliver's Battery unearthed one of Hampshire's finest 'Dark Age' treasures, the Winchester hanging bowl. For many years it was held by the British Museum, but is now in the City Museum, Winchester.
The full story of its discovery by a local archaeologist can be googled and read in a Hampshire Field Club journal, because virtually all its papers are now online.
The bowl was found in the grave of a young man buried with a javelin and hunting sword and is decorated with red spirals and fittings in the form of aquatic birds. There are counterparts in seventh century Irish manuscripts. The archaeologist, W.J. Andrew, must have been delighted, but complained that the fabulous discovery has “almost completely obscured the original purpose of [the] tentative excavations”!