A Metal Detectorist Went Digging for Fun—and Discovered a 2,000-Year-Old Trove of Ancient Artifacts
A metal detectorist named Peter Heads discovered an 'exceptional' Iron Age hoard outside of Melsonby, North Yorkshire, UK.
Finds at the excavation site include vehicle parts, elaborately decorated harnesses, and ceremonial spears.
Archaeologists used advanced X-ray technology to help excavate the trove without causing additional damage.
Have you ever thrown a coin into a wishing well? If so, you might just be engaging in Iron Age hoarding practices.
Hoarding, or burying material goods, was common practice in Britain during the Iron Age. Some scholars suggest that hoarding was a storage method, while others believe it was a ritual practice of sacrificing wealth to the gods (kind of like when we flip a penny into a mall fountain and make a wish). These deposits can be found all over the United Kingdom, and a metal detectorist might have discovered a huge one—one of the UK's 'largest and most important' Iron Age hoards, in fact.
The Melsonby hoard was originally discovered near the village of Melsonby, England in 2021. Since then, a team of archaeologists has excavated more than 800 items from the site, according to a Durham University press release. The list of finds is long: wagon and chariot parts, a cauldron and a bowl (possibly used for wine mixing), ceremonial spears, horse tack such as copper bridle bits, rein rings, and even harnesses—ornately decorated with Mediterranean coral and colored glass—for up to 14 ponies.
The team used cutting-edge X-ray technology to identify how artifacts were positioned in the ground and plan the best way to excavate without causing unnecessary damage.
Researchers date objects from the trove back 2,000 years, and with treasure that old, some wear-and-tear is unsurprising. What is much more interesting, however, is that much of the hoard seems to have been burned or broken on purpose. Experts suggest that this may have been a symbolic show of wealth and power.
'The destruction of so many high-status objects, evident in this hoard, is also of a scale rarely seen in Iron Age Britain and demonstrates that the elites of northern Britain were just as powerful as their southern counterparts,' said Tom Moore, Head of Archaeology at Durham University.
According to the press release, the treasures may have been burned on a funerary pyre—though human remains have yet to be found. More research on the trove could change what we know about the ways in which wealth and status were expressed during the Iron Age.
Researchers also said that the hoard is an 'exceptional' size for Britain, and even Europe at large. Some of the objects in the large collection match previous examples found in the region, but others more closely resemble finds from continental Europe, suggesting long-distance interconnectivity.
'Unusually it includes lots of pieces of vehicles and items such as the wine mixing bowl which is decorated in both Mediterranean and Iron Age styles,' Moore said in a Historic England press release.'Whoever originally owned the material in this hoard was probably a part of a network of elites across Britain, into Europe and even the Roman world.'
In the future, the Yorkshire Museum will launch a fundraising campaign to secure the hoard and display it to the public.
'Quite simply, this is one of the most important and exciting Iron Age period discoveries made in the UK,' Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said in the release. 'Any member of the public viewing these new discoveries will feel a real sense of excitement and wonder.'
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