A worker at a water company in Cavandi, Asturias, northwest Spain, uncovered two 2,500-year-old gold torcs while working on the municipal water pipes two weeks ago. They are of extraordinarily high quality and feature a striking diversity of goldsmithing techniques and decorative motifs, including casting, filigree, granulation, welding, and a variety of geometric designs. It is the most important torc find in Asturias, the only one made in situ and to be studied by archaeologists at the time of discovery.

While other gold necklaces from the Iron Age have been found, most were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries, when limited archaeological techniques meant much of the information about their provenance was lost, [Pablo] Arias [,professor of prehistoric archeology at the University of Cantabria,] explained.

In this case, the site is intact, giving archaeologists a much better idea of their context, he added.

“We have very precise information about where they were found,” said Arias. “It’s quite exceptional.”

Sergio Narciandi was tracing the route of an outage when he saw a shiny object on a slope next to the road. At first he assumed it was a random piece of metal from a goat farm or agricultural equipment in the area, but the brightness of the metal gave him pause. When he took a closer look, he realized it looked a lot like a torc, and a gold one at that.

He knew it needed to be reported to authorities, but he had to hunt around for a while to identify the appropriate authority, so he dialed the mayor, whom he knows personally, and the mayor told him he could deposit at city hall until the cultural patrimony officials took over. Finally Narciandi called his uncle, an archaeologist, and the uncle connected him to the director of the Archaeological Museum of Asturias.

After this round-robin of calls, archaeologists made it to the find site that very afternoon. The confirmed the object was a gold torc, then found six fragments of a second torc on the same hillside. The fragments formed a complete second gold torc. Both torcs were then swiftly transported to the museum’s laboratory for conservation.

The torc discovered by Sergio Narciandi is a rigid, c-shaped necklace in the Astur-Norgalaico style of the Celtic tribes in what is now Asturias and Galicia. It is formed of a central rod with spirals of gold wound around it and has large double vasiform terminals. Because of its size, quality, finished and technical difficulty, the first torc is considered an exceptional example of goldsmithing from the northwest of the Iberian peninsula during the Iron Age. The second piece has a rectangular section with double vasiform terminals engraved with sunburst designs on the flat ends. Both of them have wear on areas that would have been in contact with the neck, so we know that they were actively used for some time.

The torcs are now undergoing non-invasive metallurgic analysis and surface examination. This will shed new light on the manufacturing technology of Iron Age Spain, the mining of metal, the use of silver, gilding techniques and more.

An exceptionally rare Celtic gold coin has been discovered by a metal detectorist in a corn field in Denklingen, Bavaria. The so-called “rainbow cup” coin is decorated with a cross design in the center of the bowl-shaped coin. Only four rainbow cups with these markings (including this one) are known to exist, and this example is the only one with a verified find location.

The coin dateS to the 2nd century B.C., a time when the Celtic monetary economy was still new. The gold examples were so rare because they were expensive to produce and were not in wide circulation. More common copper and silver versions have been found all over southern Germany.

They are called cups because they were struck in a rounded shape, unlike the more familiar flat circular coins of other ancient (and modern) cultures. They got the rainbow monicker because they were often discovered after rain washed away the soil leaving the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow glittering on the surface.

It’s unknown how the 0.07-ounce (1.9 grams) coin ended up there, but the spot isn’t far from a ancient road. This road went from what is now Trento in northern Italy and later became known as the Roman road Via Claudia Augusta that went across the Alps, Ziegaus said.

“Perhaps the coin was accidentally lost along the way,” he said.

The “heads” side of the 0.5-inch-wide (13 millimeters) coin “shows a stylized human head with a large eye,” with the nose and lips depicted as dots, Ziegaus said. A metal analysis revealed that the coin is 77% gold, 18% silver and 5% copper.

There are only three known rainbow cups with the star-and-arch motif. “The interpretation of the motive is difficult,” Ziegaus said. “The star is perhaps a symbol for the four cardinal points, the arches are to be understood as signs for the horizon and the rising and setting of the moon.

Until recently, even finds of archaeological significance like this coin were held to be shared property of the finder and landowner. A new cultural patrimony regulation just went into effect that requires archaeological finds be reported to the State Office for Monument Preservation. Bavaria is now the owner of the material. The landowner receives appropriate compensation and the finder receives a finder’s fee.

The finder, Michael Schwaiger, was offered 6,000 for both coins, but he refused, as well he should. The landowner signed his rights over to the finder and Schwaiger donated both coins to the State Archaeological Collection. The other three known rainbow bowls are in private hands, and state officials plan to exhibit the Denklingen coins in a new permanent exhibition at the State Archaeological Collection in Munich after renovation of the facility is complete in March 2024. They are unlikely to go on display at a local museum in Denklingen because the theft of the Celtic gold coin hoard from the museum at Manching has left officials very wary that they can be adequately secured.

Bronze Age tombs so rich in luxurious grave goods they likely belonged to the rulers of the city have been discovered in the ancient city of Dromolaxia Vizatzia on the southeastern coast of Cyprus. The opulent funerary furnishings mark these tombs as among the richest ever found from the Mediterranean Bronze Age.

The tombs were found in Area A, a cemetery just outside the city perimeter. Broken pottery had been churned up by ploughs during previous agricultural work, spurring archaeologists to scan the site with magnetometers which can relay images of objects up to six feet beneath the surface of the soil. The magnetometer map revealed large cavities three to six feet under the surface.

The excavation unearthed three chamber tombs dating to the 14th century B.C. One had been looted, probably in the 19th century, suffering extensive damage to the grave goods and the human remains. The scattered bones were collected for conservation and study. Archaeologists were also able to recovered some jewelry and sherds from pottery imported from the Mycenean cultures of the Aegean, Egypt and Anatolia.

The other two tombs had never been looted, although their chambers had collapsed in antiquity. Between the two tombs, archaeologists found more than 500 artifacts, including local pottery, jewelry, daggers, knives, spearheads and imported pottery and decorative ornaments from the Aegean, Anatolia, Egypt and the Levant. The imported luxury items came from even greater distances too. There was amber from the Baltic Sea, for example, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and deep red carnelian from India.

The several well-preserved skeletons in the tombs include that of a woman surrounded by dozens of ceramic vessels, jewellery and a round bronze mirror that was once polished. A one-year-old child with a ceramic toy lay beside her.

“Several individuals, both men and women, wore diadems, and some had necklaces with pendants of the highest quality, probably made in Egypt during the 18th dynasty at the time of such pharaohs as Thutmos III and Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) and his wife Nefertiti.”

Embossed images of bulls, gazelles, lions and flowers adorn the diadems. Most of the ceramic vessels came from what we now call Greece, and the expedition also found pots from Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

The grave goods also included bronze weapons, some inlaid with ivory, and a gold-framed seal made of the hard mineral haematite with inscriptions of gods and rulers.

Dromolaxia Vizatzia was a Late Bronze Age harbor city on the shores of the Larnaca Salt Lake that flourished from around 1630 to 1150 B.C. Mines in the nearby Troodos Mountains produced copper ore and between 1500 and 1300 B.C., the city prospered as a major center of copper refining and export. Little is known about the city’s form of government, so it’s hard to say whether the people interred in the chamber tombs were royalty, exactly, but they were certainly part of the governing structure.

A rare hoard of Roman pewter has been discovered in Euston, western Suffolk. The hoard consists of a neat stack of plates and platters with smaller bowls and a cup placed atop and aside the nested platters. The metal is not dateable, but Roman pewter hoards in Britain usually date to the 4th century.

Faye Minter, Suffolk County Council’s Archaeological Archives and Projects Manager, said:

“This is a significant discovery. The larger plates and platters were used to allow food to be served communally and the octagonal bowls may have a Christian reference. Similar hoards are found across southern Britain, including from the nearby large Roman settlements at Icklingham and Hockwold.”

It was found by metal detectorist Martin White during a detecting rally on September 3rd, 2022. They alerted Suffolk County Council archaeologists who determined it was an assemblage in fragile condition that needed to be raised in a single group for separation and conservation in laboratory conditions. That was accomplished on September 20th.

The group was excavated in the Norfolk Museum Services laboratory. There is evidence of heavy plough damage to the vessels, and advanced corrosion has fused several of them together.
The main stack contained five plates and platters nested on top of each other. Corrosion materials make it impossible for the stack to be separated into its individual dishes. The top piece of the stack is fragmented and was partially lifted during the discovery process and so was conserved separately. It has a perforated decoration on the center — lines of punchmarks inside two concentric circles — which is rare in pewter.

Next to the plate stack was a group of three, one bowl on top of two small dishes, one of them decorated with a relief on the inside of the flat rim. A single inverted bowl was found on one side of the main plate stack. Two bowls with octagonal rims, also corroded together, were placed next to the plate stack, as was a single conical cup. The octagonal form may be a Christian reference

Because pewter is not a precious metal, this treasure of inestimable archaeological value does not qualify as official treasure (the wheels are Parliament are grinding excruciatingly slowly at closing this loophole) and therefore belongs to the property owner. It was found on the Euston Estate, making the Duke of Grafton the owner of the hoard. He has donated it to the West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village and Museum, near Bury St Edmunds. The conserved hoard is now on display there through January 2024.