An enormous deposit of tens of thousands of coins from the first half of the 4th century has been discovered on the seabed off the northeastern coast of Sardinia. They are in exceptional condition, with only four suffering conspicuous damage and even they are still legible enough to read their inscriptions and determine their age.

The first coins were discovered by a recreational diver who spotted the glint of metal in the shallow waters near the coast. He reported the find to the authorities, and the next day underwater archaeologists from the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Sassari and Nuoro and the Cultural Heritage Protection unit of the Carabinieri explored the seabed at the find site.

The divers recorded two main areas of coin dispersal in a large sandy area between the beach and the seagrass offshore. Archaeologists believe the topography of the seabed in that area suggests the remains of a shipwreck may be under the seagrass and sand. Fragments of amphorae manufactured in Africa and the Near East that likely came from a wrecked ship were also found among the coins.

The coins are follis (also known as nummi), bronze coins with a thin top layer of silver introduced by Diocletian in 294 A.D. By the time the coins in the Sardinian sea were produced, currency had been debased several times and the silver content was all but nil. They were widely used throughout the empire. In 2013, a massive hoard of 22,888 follis was discovered by a metal detectorist in Seaton Down, Devon, England. It was fifth largest coin hoard ever found in England. This find beats the Seaton Down hoard by at least 10,000. An initial estimate of the coin numbers based on the weight of the find places it at between 30,000 and 50,000.

So far, the coins excavated date to between 324 and 340 A.D., minted in the last year of the reign of Licinus and the ascension of Constantine the Great as sole emperor through Constantine’s death in 337 A.D. and the contentious co-rule of his three sons, Constantine II, Constantius II, Constans I. Coins from almost every mint active in the empire at that time are represented.

Conservators are still sorting through the huge numbers of coins. Cleaning and conservation of the coins and associated archaeological materials will allow archaeologists to learn more about the context of the finds. There are no current plans to excavate the find site for the remains of the possible shipwreck.

Archaeologists have uncovered a set of Bronze Age women’s jewelry in a freshly-plowed carrot field in Güttingen in northeastern Switzerland’s Thurgau canton. Dating to around 1,500 B.C., the set contains a necklace made of bronze spiked discs, two spiral finger rings, more than a hundred amber beads the size of pinheads and bronze and gold wire spirals. Found with these luxury items were more unusual (and less expensive) items including a rock crystal, a beaver tooth, a perforated bear tooth, a bronze arrowhead, a few lumps of polished iron ore, a small ammonite and a fossilized shark tooth.

The treasure was first spotted in August of this year by amateur archaeologist Franz Zahn. He was traipsing through the field after the carrots had been harvested and saw some bronze discs in the churned up soil. As an avid metal detectorist who has discovered several Iron and Bronze Age objects in the Güttingen area, Zahn immediately recognized the objects were of archaeological significance and notified the Thurgau Office of Archeology.

The spiked discs were of a type frequently found on necklaces in graves or in ritual deposits, so canton archaeologists were dispatched to the site pronto to investigate. The team arrived the next day to recover the discs and surrounding area in a single soil block. The excavation found no evidence of a burial. This was a deposit, buried directly at the find site in an organic container or bag that has long-since decomposed.

The soil block was transported to the conservation laboratory in Frauenfeld for excavation. Each discovery layer was carefully documented during the process. All told, 14 of the bronze discs were found. They are called spiked discs because of the round pointed nub in the center surrounded by three concentric circles. A string or a leather strap would have originally been threaded through a hole on each of the discs with spirals threaded between them as spacers. Eleven bronze and eight larger gold wire spirals were found at the site.

The objects are currently undergoing conservation. Some of them are very delicate and must be treated before they can be displayed. There also being subjected to a variety of scientific analyses. The plan is for the set to go on public display next year at the Museum of Archeology in Frauenfeld.

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.