Category: Treasures

National Museums Scotland acquires unique Bronze Age hoard

Ancient, Treasures

A unique collection of more than 500 bronze objects dating to 1000–800 B.C. has been acquired by the National Museums Scotland after four years of conservation and investigation. The objects and materials in the hoard would be rare finds as individuals, but the agglomeration of such a diverse group of artifacts has no parallel on the archaeological record of Europe.

The first bronze pieces were discovered near the town of Peebles in the Scottish Borders by metal detectorist Mariusz Stępień in 2020. Instead of digging everything up himself, he wisely reported the find immediately to Scotland’s Treasure Trove Unit and archaeologists from National Museums Scotland were dispatched to investigate. They soon realized this was a hoard of many objects, including organic elements, so decided to remove the entire hoard in a soil block for excavation in laboratory conditions.

Archaeologists CT scanned the recovered block so they could map out the excavation ahead of time and document the internal structure of the hoard in its original context. Archaeologists identified from the scans that some of the pieces, including the first pieces discovered by Stępień, were manufactured using the lost-wax casting technique, very seldom found in Britain which indicates they were made by highly skilled metalsmiths. These are some of the earliest examples of lost-wax cast objects in Scotland.

The meticulous laboratory excavation took five weeks and ultimately uncovered more than 500 components, some of which fit together with other objects in the hoard. Some were complete and intact, like a Late Bronze Age sword still in its wooden scabbard.

Other pieces are small, intricate and fragile and typically do not survive three thousand years in the ground. Many of the decorated bronze fittings are still attached to leather or wood. An array of bronze buttons remain looped onto 3,000-year-old cords and straps. Astonishingly, the Hoard also contains rare survivals of tiny bronze pins, studs and bosses embedded in wood or leather. There are remains of complex decorated straps, which are still mostly articulated. We do not yet know the purpose of these straps. This is a level of detail and insight which is not usually glimpsed for the Bronze Age.

Some larger objects in the hoard highlight Bronze Age Scotland’s position as part of a network of communities across the North Sea. There are two rattle pendants, which are the first ever found in Scotland. These are more commonly found in Denmark, northern Germany and northern Poland. Two others from Britain were found in a hoard from Parc y Meirch in north Wales. These remarkable objects consist of interlinked bronze rings and pendant plates. These would have hung from a horse or wooden vehicle and rattled as they moved.

Such a complex group of components was not randomly assembled. To the Bronze Age people who collected and buried the Peebles Hoard, they were interlinked, literally and metaphorically. Researchers will be studying the connections between these artifacts and how they fit into the cultural context of Bronze Age Scotland and its links to mainland Europe.

The conservation of the bronze objects and the extremely fragile organic elements will be complicated and expensive. National Museums Scotland will be launching a public campaign to raise funds for the conservation and study of the Peebles Hoard. For now, if you’d like to pitch in, you have to contact their Development team via email.

Watch Dr. Matthew Knight, Senior Curator of Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, explain the Peebles Hoard in this video. It gives you an idea of the scale of the objects and how complex the excavation was.

Charity acquires largest Norman coin hoard for the nation

Medieval, Treasures

The hoard of 2,584 silver pennies from the time of the Norman conquest discovered at Chew Valley in Somerset has been acquired for the nation by the non-profit South West Heritage Trust. Valued at £4.3 million ($5.6 million), it is the highest-value treasure find ever made in England. The organization was able to raise the money thanks to a large grant of £4,420,527 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and £150,000 from the Art Fund. The sum will be shared 50/50 between the landowner and the seven finders.

The coins were discovered by a group of seven metal detectorists in January of 2019. Only two of them, Lisa Grace and Adam Staples, were experienced, and they were teaching the rest how to use their new machines when one of the newbies found a William the Conqueror silver penny. Then they found another, and another. They should have stopped after the first few coins and called archaeologists, of course, but they did not. Instead, five hours of detector alerts and amateur digging later, they had a bucket full of thousands of silver coins. Only then did they report the find to the Portable Antiquities Scheme and a week later they deposited the coins at the British Museum.

The coins had been scattered by agricultural work over the centuries, so the hoard was not found as it was buried anyway, but having lost the chance to excavate the archaeological context of the hoard whatever that might be is all the more tragic in this case because the hoard is unique window into the immediate aftermath of the Norman invasion. The Chew Valley hoard consists of 1,343 silver pennies of William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087), and 1,240 coins from the last Anglo-Saxon king of England Harold II (r. January 1066-October 14 1066), with a one penny of Edward the Confessor (r. 1042- January 1066) and three “mules,” counterfeit combinations of coins by William and Harold that were created by moneyers to dodge taxes. About 100 moneyers from 46 mints are named on the coins; some of the moneyers are the first named people from an English city.

All of the coins date to between 1066 and 1068. It is the largest hoard of coins from the immediate post-Norman Conquest period ever discovered and the largest Norman treasure of any kind to be found since 1833. The hoard was buried in 1068 on a property that would later be granted to Gisa, chaplain to King Edward the Confessor and the Bishop of Wells. At that time, the Chew Valley was embroiled in a rebellion against Normal rule led by Harold’s sons, so it’s like the coins were buried for safekeeping.

The Chew Valley hoard will go on display at the British Museum starting November 26th. It will then go on a brief tour of UK museums, including in Bath near the find site, before settling permanently at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.

Anglo-Saxon imitation of Roman gold coin declared treasure

Ancient, Medieval, Treasures

An Anglo-Saxon imitation of a late Roman gold solidus discovered in Norfolk last year has been declared treasure. It’s a rough copy of a solidus minted by the Emperor Honorius (r. 393-423 A.D.) that was created long after his death to wear as a pendant.

The imitation Honorius coin has a ribbed suspension loop with four ribs and three grooves soldered to the 12 o’clock position. The wear and tear on the loop indicates the coin was worn as a pendant for a long time, likely with the obverse (the emperor’s bust) showing and the reverse against the body.

Several versions of the genuine solidus were minted in the imperial capitals of Mediolanum (Milan), Ravenna and Constantinople between 394 and 402 A.D. They all portray the draped, cuirassed bust of Honorius wearing a pearl diadem on the obverse. The reverse features the emperor standing with the military standard in his right hand and a winged Victory standing on a globe in his left. Under his left foot is a bound captive. There are small variations between the different strikes of this coin type, and the military standard Honorius holds comes in a couple of forms. Some of the coins have a standard vexillum: a banner draped over a cross-bar mounted to a vertical staff. Others have a labarum, a vexillum with the Chi-Rho symbol on top which was the talismanic symbol Constantine carried.

The vexillum on the Anglo-Saxon imitation looks like a Christian cross inside a square, but the Anglo-Saxons were not Christian yet and in any case even the Christian version of the vexillum doesn’t have just a plain cross slapped inside the banner; it’s the ☧ symbol with the loop of the P on the center top of the banner. It’s quite hard to make out on the small gold coins, and the copyists didn’t have the cultural recognition or skill to make the distinction. The abstract lines that are supposed to convey the winged Victory underscore those limitations. They also removed the captive entirely, probably due to its complexity, but it’s an entertaining thought that they might have rejected the iconography of subjugation since the moneyers who designed these coins would most assuredly have identified them with the barbarian under the emperor’s heel rather than the emperor they identified themselves with.

Dr Marsden, from the Norfolk Historic Environment Service, said this was an era when the Roman Empire, which had become officially Christian by AD380, was “in freefall”.

“We know the Anglo-Saxons of this period are pagan and they are moving in and starting to take over the whole of England, mainly in the east at this moment,” he said.

“It’s slightly ironic, these people are definitely not Christian, yet they are copying a Christian image – the moot point is if they understood the imagery – and they blundered the lettering, so they’re certainly not literate.”

A number of gold coins from the late Western Roman and Byzantine empires converted into pendants in the early Middle Ages have been found in Britain. Genuine Roman coins with suspension loops added by the Anglo-Saxons in the 6th and 7th centuries have been found both as individuals and in coin hoards. Roman gold coins were hard to find at the time and place, hence their desirability as a status symbol instead of simply being used as bullion. Imitations of imperial solidi, siliquae and tremisi were created by the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples, most prominently the Merovingian Franks whose mints produced almost all of the coins in England at that time. All 37 of the gold coins found in the Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo ship burial, four of which were imitations of Byzantine gold coins, came from different mints in Merovingian Gaul.

Dr Marsden said such imitations were “very unusual”.

“We see Roman gold coins being repurposed as coins, occasionally with very similar suspension loops, but here they’ve made the whole thing from scratch,” he said.

Despite the collapse of the empire, the Anglo-Saxons would have come across many impressive Roman buildings, as well as coins and artefacts, and that may be why they want to copy something “so distinctly Roman”.

Viking silver bracelet hoard found on farm in Norway

Medieval, Treasures

A hoard of four Viking Age silver bangles has been unearthed on a mountainside at a farm in Årdal in Hjelmeland municipality, Norway. Each of them are of a different style and in excellent condition. They were found less than eight inches under the surface so close together than they overlapped each other, so there is no question they have not been disturbed since they were buried in the 9th century.

“This is a unique find, because we very rarely find such objects exactly where they were placed. As a rule, such valuable objects are discovered on fields that have been plowed, where an object has been completely taken out of its original context. Since the silver hoard has not been moved, it can give us completely new insights into life and society in the Viking Age,” says [lead archaeologist Volker] Demuth.

The excavation was initiated when the landowner, farmer Tårn Sigve Schmidt, called in archaeologists to survey the route of a tractor road he was planning to build up the mountain. Archaeologists found evidence of an extensive Viking farm, including dwellings for people and outbuildings for animals. Artifacts discovered include fragments of soapstone pots, rivets, knife blades and whetstones.

The silver bangles were found under what was once the floor of a small house. The dwelling is so small and spare that archaeologists believe it probably housed enslaved workers, and there were no other artifacts discovered in the area. The excavation found evidence that the farm was burned down around the time the silver bracelets were buried. The people who lived at the farm may have therefore buried the hoard before they fled an attack, and chosen an unlikely location to deter looters.

The bracelets are similar in style to six Viking silver neck rings now in the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger that were discovered in 1769 at another farm in Hjelmeland. They were likely deposited as ritual sacrifices to mark or seal the boundaries of a settlement. They were not associated with a grave, and indeed no silver neck rings have ever been found in a Viking grave. That might suggest another motivation for the burial of the rings. According to Odin’s Law, as recorded in the Heimskringa saga, men were allowed to bring with them to Valhalla everything that was burned on the funeral pyre with them and anything they had personally buried in the ground.

The bracelets were not fully excavated at the site, but rather removed in a soil block for micro-excavation in laboratory conditions at the Archaeological Museum of the University of Stavanger. Conservators have x-rayed the block and will take samples of the soil for evidence of any organic material, like a bag or a cloth, that the bracelets were wrapped in before burial. The hoard will be put on display at the museum when study and conservation is complete.

Update: Museum acquires Roman gold bracelet found by 11-year-old boy

Ancient, Museums, Treasures

The Novium Museum in Chichester is the proud new owner of the Roman gold bracelet discovered in 2022 by an 11-year-old boy walking the dog with his mother. The gold jewel dates to the 1st century A.D. and is a rare cuff of the armilla type, a battle honor given to Roman soldiers for bravery. Most of the ones that have been found are bronze; this is only the fourth gold example recorded in the Portable Antiquities Scheme database.

It was Rowan Brannan who spotted the glint of gold, and Rowan who insisted it was real gold and took it home over the objections of his mother. Rowan researched it further when he got home, and with the support of a metal detecting family friend, he reported it to the local Finds Liaison Officer. Archaeologists confirmed not only that it was real gold, but that it was an authentic Roman artifact.

The armilla was declared official treasure at a Coroner’s Court earlier this year. Rowan and his mother Amanda were kept in the loop throughout the process. The British Museum’s valuation committee then determined its fair market value, and a local museum close to the find site was given the opportunity to acquire the piece for the assessed value. That sum would then be split between the finder and the landowner.

The Novium Musem was able to raise the money with a grant from Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. The armilla will go on display at the museum on September 10th.

Chichester District Council leader Adrian Moss said:

“Acquiring this bracelet for The Novium Museum’s collection will help shed light on military attitudes, including how Roman soldiers were rewarded for their bravery, gallantry and service, particularly with regards to the Roman invasion of Britain in AD43.

“This piece will widen our museum team’s understanding of Roman life locally and allows us to tell a different story from the Roman period.”