Iron age gold jewellery goes on display in Edinburgh

From the BBC:

A hoard of Iron Age jewellery found by a treasure hunter in Stirlingshire has gone on display in Edinburgh.

The four solid gold neck ornaments, or torcs, could be more than 2,000 years old.

They were found in a field by safari park manager David Booth, who was using a metal detector for the first time.

They are now owned by the Crown and have been placed on public view at the National Museum of Scotland for the next three weeks.

Fraser Hunter, the museum's curator, said "These four gold torcs are very beautiful, very displayable objects.

"They have many stories to tell."

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Man finds treasure estimated to be worth of £1 million

From News.Scotsman.com:

A metal-detecting enthusiast has unearthed a 2,000-year-old treasure hoard worth an estimated £1 million, it was revealed today.

Four gold neckbands dating to the Iron Age were discovered in a field near Stirling by the amateur hunter.

The man, who has not been identified, informed Scotland's Treasure Trove Unit which sent a team to excavate the site, the Daily Record newspaper reported.

The bands, or "torcs", made from twisted gold, are thought to date from the 1st and 3rd century BC.

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Norfolk Boudicca site ‘of national importance’

From EDP 24:

The Boudicca temple

One of the county's most important Iron Age and early Roman sites has been recognised as being of national importance.

The Boudicca Temple site in Fison Way on the outskirts of Thetford has been designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument by the Department for Culture Media and Sport, recognising it as a site of national importance and protecting it from the threat of future development.

Artefacts from the Iron and Roman age were first discovered at the site in 1973 when an aerial photograph recorded the cropmarks of an enclosure, just beside the A11 Thetford Bypass.

Six years later a hoard of gold jewellery and silver spoons dating back to the 4th century AD, was found during the construction of the Travenol Factory on Wyatt Way.

It is thought the treasure may have been associated with a late Roman temple and the god Faunus, a woodland deity.

Norfolk County councillor and cabinet member for culture, Derrick Murphy, said: “Recognition that this site is of national importance is long overdue, and it is really good news for Norfolk and Thetford that after a long and concerted campaign it will now be protected from future development or damage.”

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Iron Age coins declared treasure

From the BBC News:

It was the biggest collection of Iron-age coins found in Britain in 160 years

One of the UK's largest hauls of Iron Age gold coins has been declared treasure at an inquest in Suffolk.

The 840 handmade coins, called staters, were unearthed in a field near Wickham Market, Suffolk, in March last year.

After Michael Dark made the discovery with his metal detector, archaeologists found more coins, which are now at the British Museum in London.

Experts believe they were produced by predecessors of the Iceni queen Boudicca and date from 40BC to AD15.

It is the largest haul of coins to be discovered in 150 years and could be worth up to £500,000.

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Iron Age Gold Unearthed in Suffolk Field

From: World Coin News

In spring 2008 a hoard of 783 ancient British gold coins was discovered by a metal detectorist near the village of Wickham Market in southeast Suffolk, England. It is one of the largest hoards of Iron Age gold coins ever found in Britain and is one of the most important because it was unearthed virtually in situ, where it was buried 2,000 years ago in an earthenware pot.

A small-scale excavation of the hoard site, jointly funded by the British Museum and Suffolk County Council, was conducted last Oct. 14-15. The two-day dig revealed that the hoard had been deposited within a ditched enclosure of late Iron Age date and produced 42 more gold coins, bringing the total to 825. Two intersecting ditches were partially excavated; the shards of wheel-thrown pottery found in them suggest one was open in the late Iron Age and the other was dug and filled in later during the Roman period.

All but two of the 825 gold coins were minted in East Anglia by the Iceni, Queen Boudica's tribe. The two "foreigners" came from Lincolnshire. Five of the gold coins - the earliest in the hoard - were made about 40-30 B.C. They are known as Snettisham Type after a hoard excavated at Snettisham, Norfolk, in 1987-1989. The vast bulk of the Wickham Market hoard - 818 coins - are all Freckenham Type gold staters, named after the 90 or more found in a pot in a garden at Freckenham, Suffolk, in 1885. They were minted over a period of two or three decades, probably sometime around 20 B.C.-15 A.D., perhaps by two or three different rulers of the Iceni who may have governed concurrently.

John Talbot, a specialist in the Iron Age coinage of East Anglia - he is also chairman of the English National Ballet and managing director of Johnson Cleaners - visited the excavation and believes that the Wickham Market hoard may have been buried sometime around 15 A.D. or shortly afterward. During the past nine years, Talbot has made a detailed die study of more than 9,000 coins of the Iceni and is regarded as the foremost expert in this field. His deposition date of approximately 15 A.D. therefore carries some weight - a welcome bonus for Suffolk archaeologists who are accustomed to working with much broader chronologies in the Iron Age.

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