The Dorset Museum & Art Gallery has raised the money to acquire a rare Late Bronze Age (950–750 B.C.) gold bracelet with a crowdfunding campaign to get them over the finish line.

The bracelet was discovered by a metal detectorist in Hilton, Dorset, in 2020. It is incomplete, a long fragment of a flat strip with a flared terminal. The strip was deliberately bent, folded over with the terminal on the inside. The other end was deliberately cut, not broken. The edges were raised to create low flanges on both sides. Comparison of the features of the band, particularly the flared terminal and low flanges, to similar pieces found in other locations confirmed that it was a bracelet dating to 950–750 B.C. The total weight of the gold is 14.05 grams (half an ounce).

The piece underwent the Treasure adjudication process, but the result was a foregone conclusion as it is more than 300 years old and composed of a precious metal. After it was declared treasure, a valuation committee of experts at the British Museum assessed its fair market value at £1,200 ($1,530).

As always, the museums closest to the find site are given the first chance to acquire the piece for the assessed value. Even a comparatively modest valuation is challenging for local museums with no acquisition budget to speak of, but the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery was highly motivated by the rarity and significance of the piece to Dorset’s history.

This item is a rarity in the county. Whilst Bronze Age gold objects are by their nature rare, those known from Dorset and dating to the Late Bronze Age only comprise a limited number of forms, and gold items are vastly outweighed by finds of base metal objects.

This item provides an indication that the deliberate modification of gold objects prior to their deposition continued into the Late Bronze Age in Dorset. Many Bronze Age metal objects were deliberately modified in antiquity, but this is not apparently related to treating the object as scrap, but rather carries some other social meaning within which larger objects such as bracelets and torcs were portioned and changed before entering the ground. This object is also significant for the location where it was found. The majority of finds of Bronze Age gold (and indeed bronze) objects have been recovered from the more north-easterly part of the county around Cranborne Chase. This was located in the centre of the county in the chalk valleys, an area which is rich in prehistoric archaeology but less researched and poorly understood.

The museum was keen to exhibit the piece, study it and share it with other researchers. They did not want to risk the piece being sold to a private collector. They were able to raise £720 on their own, which left just £480 ($612) to raise. The crowd pitched in with alacrity, and a week later the fundraiser was over with its goal easily met.

Archaeologists have discovered a pot of Persian gold coins likely dating to the 5th century B.C. in the ancient city-state of Notion in western Turkey. The coins are gold darics, characterized by the image of a kneeling archer wearing a long tunic on the obverse. The reverse has no image, only a punch mark. They were likely minted in Sardis, 60 miles northeast of Notion, and were buried in a small wine jug known as an olpe.

Built on two promontories overlooking a bay on the Hales River where it meets the Aegean, Notion was a harbor town twinned with the inland city of Kolophon. The first textual record of the city dates to the 6th century B.C., but most of the archaeological remains in its current location date the Hellenistic period (3rd-1st century B.C.). Researchers believed it may have been refounded at that time, reconstructed with a planned grid structure, fortified walls, terracing for expanded residential neighborhoods and a complex water supply system.

Notion was largely abandoned after the 1st century A.D. The isolated location kept it from being rebuilt after its abandonment, and it is basically devoid of post-Roman construction. There has also been very little ground shifting or build-up to speak of, which makes its ancient remains extraordinarily legible on the surface. The University of Michigan’s Notion Archaeological Project has been documenting and excavating the site since 2014.

The 2023 excavation found remains pre-dating the Hellenistic reconstruction of the city, including pottery from the 5th century B.C. and a section of ancient wall that had been incorporated into the foundations of a 3rd century B.C. Hellenistic house. The pot of coins was discovered under the courtyard of the house. They had been buried in a corner of the older building that had once stood on that site.

A daric was the equivalent to one month’s pay for a soldier at that time, and were primarily used to pay mercenaries employed by the Persian Empire. This hoard may have been buried by a soldier involved in the conflicts between the Persian Empire and the Greek cities.

Notion was incorporated into the Persian Empire together with the other Greek cities on the west coast of Turkey in the mid-sixth century B.C. It was freed from Persian rule in the early fifth century B.C., but then reintegrated into the Persian empire in the early fourth century B.C. It remained a Persian possession until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 334 B.C.

Ancient historians frequently mention military operations around Notion. During much of the fifth century B.C., Notion, while freed from the Persians, lay under Athenian domination. The conflicting loyalties of the inhabitants of Notion and nearby cities, which occupied a border region between the Persian and Athenian spheres of influence, are illustrated by a dramatic episode related by the Greek historian Thucydides.

Between 430 B.C. and 427 B.C., a group of Persian sympathizers from the nearby city of Colophon had occupied part of Notion with the help of Greek and “barbarian” mercenaries. In 427 B.C., an Athenian general called Paches attacked and killed the pro-Persian mercenaries, after luring their commander into a trap. The Persian sympathizers were then expelled, and Notion was reorganized under Athenian supervision.

The archaeological context suggests these battles could be the background of the deposition of the hoard and its having been left behind instead of retrieved by the person who buried it for safety. However, the current chronology of Persian coins categorizes the darics found in the jug as 4th century B.C. The chronology may have to be rewritten because most the coin discoveries on which the scholarship is based were not made in their original archaeological context. In fact, this is the only Persian gold coin hoard in its archaeological context ever discovered in Asia Minor. One of the exciting aspects of the find is that it gives researchers the opportunity to correct the timeline of Achaemenid gold coinage based on the analysis of the archaeological stratigraphy and absolute dating of pottery found in the layer with the coins.

The gold coins are now at the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selcuk, Turkey, as are the Athenian pottery fragments recovered in the courtyard excavation.

The excavation and analysis of a Bronze Age hoard discovered in Rosemarkie, a coastal town near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, has revealed rare organic plant remains entwined among the bronze bracelets and necklaces. The hoard dates to around 1000 B.C.

The hoard was discovered during a preventative archaeology excavation that took place at the site of a future housing development between August 2020 and July 2021. The excavation revealed remains of a Bronze Age settlement with six roundhouses, a timber palisade fence, drying kilns, plough marks from agricultural work, a cist grave and, close to one of the postholes from a roundhouse, a small circular pit containing a hoard of bronze objects. They were likely originally enclosed in a woven basket or bag that was buried whole.

The container has decomposed and there are no visible remnants of it, but hoard was removed in a soil block to preserve any organic remains and trace material of the original context. The hoard is now being excavated in laboratory conditions and archaeologists have so far recovered one complete neck ring, one partial neck ring, six penannular bracelets and one cup-ended penannular bracelet.

Fibrous plant cords were found tying some of the bangles together. Archaeologists believe they survived because of the anti-microbial effect of the copper in the bronze. The corrosion products of the copper adhered to the cords and prevented decay.

“The recovery of the artefacts was successfully carried out under the controlled conditions necessary to preserve these highly significant objects, particularly the very delicate organic cords that tether some of the objects together,” said Rachel Buckley, who led the laboratory excavation. “Where bracelets were held together with organic material, these were recovered as a group to allow further detailed study. While there are other examples of hoards where it has been postulated that items were bound together due to their positioning, the vegetation in the Rosemarkie hoard has survived for approximately 3000 years, proving that these artefacts were held together.” […]

“That the hoard was buried under a single homogenous fill within a shallow pit with little extra room for anything other than what was found within, indicates that this was no accidental loss,” said Iraia Arabaolaza, who is managing GUARD Archaeology’s analyses. “It would seem that the shallow pit was dug to the required length and depth to accommodate the items, before then being quickly backfilled. It may be that it was intended as temporary storage with the intention of recovering the hoard at some stage. The evidence from the surrounding settlement may reveal whether it was not just the hoard that was abandoned but the settlement as well.”