Bronze Age gold sun pendant is a dazzling find

Some time back I brought you news of an English local authority which, controversially, sold off various paintings from its permanent collection to raise funds.

I wondered aloud whether deaccessioned material would become the norm in our salerooms.

Thankfully not (so far) and, contrarily, several museums have recently dipped into resources to add important items to their collections.

The latest addition to a national collection was perhaps the most spectacular for some years.

This was a fabulous 3,000-year-old gold sun pendant heralded as one of the most important Bronze Age finds ever made.

The astonishingly well-preserved pendant, or bulla, was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast in Shropshire in 2018 and has now been purchased by the British Museum for £250,000.

Neil Wilkin, the museum’s Bronze Age curator, recalled dropping everything when he first saw it: “I was absolutely flabbergasted, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said.

“To me, it is the most important object from this period, the first age of metal, that has come up in about 100 years.”

The pendant, just 3.6cm by 4.7cm, was made around 1,000800BC and is decorated with semi-circles and geometric motifs.

One side of it is a stylised solar design, reflecting the importance of the sun and its path across the sky to Bronze Age dwellers.

It will probably be known as the Shropshire Sun Pendant and will go on display from November at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery, near the find site. In 2021 it will go to the British Museum and will be displayed near other Bronze Age treasures, such as the remarkable Mold gold cape, perhaps the greatest early British artifact I have ever seen.

Pictured top is the gold sun pendant (British Museum).