# The First Number in a Hoard Is a Counting Rule > The Staffordshire Hoard is 4,600 pieces, or just under 4,000, or around 700, or more than 600, depending on which official page you read. Fourteen group records in this archive show the count is the figure most likely to change, and why. > The Study - 2026-09-17 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-first-number-in-a-hoard-is-a-counting-rule/ ## Key points - Fourteen records in this archive describe a group rather than a single object: hoards, sets, series, a dispersed manuscript. In every one the count of pieces is the figure that has moved most since the find, and it moved because the counting rule changed, not because the material did. - The Staffordshire Hoard carries four official figures at once: 4,600 fragments, just under 4,000 objects and fragments, more than 4,000 fragments making around 700 items, and more than 600 significant objects. The first two count what came out of the ground, the last two count what the pieces belong to. The published gold weight moves with the rule, from about 5.1 kilograms in the figures that circulated from the find to nearly 4 in the 2019 catalogue announcement. - A set can lose its count in the other direction. The Unicorn Tapestries are seven hangings on eight accession numbers, because one survives as two strips. The Beauvais Missal is 309 leaves, of which 122 have been located. The Aldobrandini Tazze are twelve cups whose emperors were unscrewed and put back on the wrong dishes. - The number a museum quotes is usually the number it holds, not the number that was found. The Walters holds 23 vessels of the Kaper Koraon treasure and does not claim that was all of it. The Cheapside Hoard's own holders give 25 pieces at the British Museum in one account and 20 in another, and both are published. - Priam's Treasure has two figures that are routinely confused: Schliemann's own itemised count of roughly 8,750 small gold pieces for Treasure A, and the 259 to 260 catalogued items of the whole Trojan collection at the Pushkin. They count different things. ## A hoard record begins with a number that is not a fact ## Four official counts of one hoard ## The count as found and the count a museum holds ## Sets that were made as a number and lost it ## Two figures that count different things ## A monument's count is a fraction, and the denominator moves ## The fourteen group records and the rule behind each count ## How to read the first number in a group record The first number in a group record is a rule, and the honest record prints the rule beside it. Fourteen groups here carry counts that differ by a factor of six for the same material, and in every case the difference is a decision about what counts as one, who is counting, and whether the pile or the object is the unit. Give the count its rule, print both official figures where two exist, and never let a hoard's headline number stand as if somebody had simply counted. ## Questions **How many objects are in the Staffordshire Hoard?** It depends on the counting rule. Birmingham Museums' resources page says just under 4,000 objects and broken fragments, Historic England says more than 4,000 fragments making around 700 individual items, and the Society of Antiquaries' 2019 catalogue announcement gives more than 600 significant objects in 4,600 fragments. The first counts what came out of the ground and the last counts what the pieces belong to after a decade of conservation. **Why do the Unicorn Tapestries have eight accession numbers for seven hangings?** Because the fifth hanging survives only as two narrow strips, accessioned at the Metropolitan Museum as 38.51.1 and 38.51.2 and given in 1938, a year after the six intact hangings, 37.80.1 to 37.80.6. Seven is the set, eight is the inventory. **What are the two counts for Priam's Treasure?** Schliemann's own itemised list for Treasure A comes to roughly 8,750 small gold rings, buttons and other pieces plus the named larger objects. The figure of 259 to 260 catalogued items describes the whole Schliemann Trojan collection at the Pushkin Museum, from several find-groups excavated between 1871 and 1890. They count different things and are not interchangeable. **How many pieces of the Cheapside Hoard are outside the London Museum?** The London Museum's published account says five at the Victoria and Albert Museum and twenty-five at the British Museum. The curator Hazel Forsyth gave twenty to the British Museum in 1914. The archive's record carries both figures rather than averaging them. **How many leaves of the Beauvais Missal have been found?** 122 of the original 309, located in more than a hundred institutional and private collections since the book was broken up and sold leaf by leaf from 1942. The virtual reconstruction is ongoing. **Which group records in the archive have only one published count?** The Mildenhall Treasure, thirty-four pieces declared together in 1946, and the Lydian Hoard, 363 objects fixed by the 1993 return to Turkey. Both were declared whole to one authority at one time, and neither went through a market or a division between museums. ## Sources - [1] Birmingham Museums, Discovering the Staffordshire Hoard, resources page. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the statement that the hoard contains just under 4,000 objects and broken fragments, most of which are war-gear, and the burial date of AD 650 to 675. - [2] Birmingham Museums, The Staffordshire Hoard research and conservation, resources page. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the description of conservation as a giant jigsaw puzzle with 4,000 fragments and the re-joining of objects from as many as 27 fragments. - [3] Historic England, Understanding the Staffordshire Hoard, research back issue. Read 17 September 2026 in the in-app browser after a 403 on the plain fetch. Source for the statement that the hoard is composed of more than 4,000 fragments, which together make up around 700 individual items. - [4] Medievalists.net, Staffordshire Hoard secrets revealed in new book, October 2019, reporting the Society of Antiquaries of London's announcement of The Staffordshire Hoard: An Anglo-Saxon Treasure, edited by Chris Fern, Tania Dickinson and Leslie Webster. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for more than 600 significant objects found in 4,600 fragments, nearly 4 kilos of gold and 1.7 kilos of silver. - [5] Birmingham Museums, Staffordshire Hoard, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery highlights page. Read in full 17 September 2026. Source for the finding that approximately a third of the fragments come from a single high-status helmet. - [6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records for The Unicorn Tapestries, accessions 37.80.1 to 37.80.6 and 38.51.1 and 38.51.2, gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 and 1938. Cited from the archive's record, which was built against the museum's own object pages. - [7] Lisa Fagin Davis, the Broken Books platform at Saint Louis University and the Fragmentarium reconstruction of the Beauvais Missal, F-4ihz, the platform on which 122 of 309 leaves have been located. Cited from the archive's Beauvais Missal record.