Huge Iron Age haul of coins found (using metal detector).
rpw
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Huge Iron Age haul of coins found
One of the UK's largest hauls of Iron Age gold coins has been found in Suffolk.
The 824 so-called staters were found, using a metal detector, in a broken pottery jar buried in a field near Wickham Market.
Jude Plouviez, of the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, said the coins dated from 40BC to AD15.
They are thought to have been minted by predecessors of the Iceni Queen Boudicca.
Ms Plouviez said their value when in circulation had been estimated at a modern equivalent of between £500,000 and £1m, but they were likely to be worth less than that now.
Wealthy tribes
"It's a good, exciting find. It gives us a lot of new information about the late Iron Age, and particularly East Anglia in the late Iron Age.
"The discovery is important because it highlights the probable political, economic and religious importance of an area.
"It certainly suggests there was a significant settlement nearby. As far as we understand, it was occupied by wealthy tribes or subtribes," she said.
Ms Plouviez said the find was the largest collection of Iron Age gold coins found in Britain since 1849, when a farm worker unearthed between 800 and 2,000 gold staters in a field near Milton Keynes.
Secret excavations
She said secret excavations had been carried out on the latest find in Suffolk after a man reported it to the council's archaeological service in October.
The staters, which each weigh about 5g, will now be valued ahead of a treasure trove inquest.
"We don't know how much they will be worth but it will be less than they were at the time," said Ms Plouviez.
"After the treasure trove inquest, they will be offered to museums at their current value."
She said the exact location of the find would not be made public but added "thorough" searches of the area had not uncovered any further artefacts.
Small Size National Bank Note Type Set $5-$100 0
Comments
Looks like digging a deep hole in the backyard & buying one of those HUGE Clay Olive Oil Jars is better than a bank vault. ha
No PVC damage, No confiscation by the I.R.S., No Fancy/Smancy alarm system.. Fire Proof too
Obscurum per obscurius
<< <i>I really, really like how metal detecting and archeologists work together in the UK. I wish MD's had more respect here. Maybe it's something we have to earn. >>
IMHO Americans (not all but a large number) do not have the sense of history that the Brits do. Here they seem to be interested more in scoring a big haul for profit rather than historical value.
How many people do you hear of that buy a metal detector hoping to make a historical find vs those that believe the commercial hype and are looking to find items they can sell for monetary gain?
Additionally our legal climate is such that if the average American were to find a huge horde of gold or silver coins, they would claim their right to the cash and would then need an army of lawyers to try and keep what they found after people come out of the woodwork to lay claim to it as well.