History David Horspool
Metal-detector finds – from Bronze Age gold to Roman emperors
Do the names Brian Malin, Cliff Bradshaw, Terry Herbert and Kevin Blackburn mean anything to you?
They may sound like a tough-tackling back four of the mid-seventies, but in fact they are responsible for some of the most important archaeological and historical discoveries of the past 20 years.
They aren’t historians or professional archaeologists – they’re the metal detectorists.
Detectorists (the detector is the machine) received an affectionate ribbing in the recent TV series of that name, starring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook. But the results of their activities, which of course include hours of trudging about fields finding nothing but bottle tops and ring pulls, have transformed the way historians think about all sorts of aspects of our past.
Take the Romans. In 2004, Malin discovered a jar of third-century AD coins buried in the Oxfordshire countryside, including one bearing the name Domitianus. The single previous coin from this period engraved with this name, discovered in France, had long been dismissed as a probable hoax, because the only emperor named Domitianus lived about 200 years earlier.
The new coin means Domitianus II must have existed, briefly elevated to the title during the declining years of the western empire in the third century AD.
Another Roman find, made by Kevin Blackburn, gives a window to a more settled time in the Roman occupation. The Staffordshire Moorlands Pan is a copper and enamel bowl, or trulla, of the mid-second century, a keepsake from Hadrian’s Wall, inlaid with the names of forts on its western edge, and a name, Draco, possibly of its owner.
The Ringlemere Cup, Cliff Bradshaw’s find, has enhanced historians’ view of an even earlier period. This mangled but beautiful object, made from a single piece of gold, is nearly 4,000 years old. One of only two of similar type discovered in Britain, and of only six in Europe as a whole, the cup allows scholars to piece together a picture of a Bronze Age culture existing between Britain, Brittany, Switzerland and Germany.
Other recent finds have made historians rethink Alfred the Great’s relations with his neighbours; the reach and sophistication of the Vikings who settled in England; the level of resistance to the Norman Conquest; and the location of the battle of Bosworth.
And that is before we get to the most astonishing recent find, the Staffordshire Hoard, discovered in 2009 by Terry Herbert. This haul of more than 4,500 mostly gold and silver pieces from seventh-century Mercia is both a cache of weapons and a showcase of extraordinary workmanship. It includes parts of an ornate helmet ‘fit for a king’ (as the Potteries Museum, which now shares the Hoard, describes it). It’s every inch a match for the Sutton Hoo example.
Metal-detecting is not a purely British pastime. The machine was invented in France, and in the United States was first used to trace bullets in gunshot wounds (including those of President James Garfield, assassinated in 1881 to no avail), before being briefly taken up, with no more success, by gold prospectors. Now hobbyists trawl American Civil War battlefields and post videos of their finds.
In Britain, however, there is a unique partnership between amateurs and professionals, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which encourages detectorists to register finds with British Museum liaison officers across the country. In the case of suspected treasure, there is a legal obligation to do so, but the scheme is envisaged as a two-way street.
Detectorists, once dismissed as cranks, are now respected as the first line of archaeological research. They get to understand more about their find through expert advice, and the experts can grow their understanding of the past.
The scheme also preserves discoveries of great historical and financial value, and money is raised to compensate the detectorists and landowners so that finds can be preserved for the nation.
To buy the Staffordshire Hoard, £3.285 million was raised, including £900,000 directly from the public. Since the scheme began in 1997, more than 1.5 million finds have been reported. Kevin Leahy of the British Museum calls the wealth and spread of resulting data ‘unparalleled anywhere in the world’.
This October, Reading University revealed the discovery of the tomb of the ‘Marlow Warlord’, a six-foot-tall sixthcentury warrior and tribal leader, buried in state with sword, spears and other objects of high status. His presence, according to Dr Gabor Thomas of the university, ‘provides new insights into this stretch of the Thames in the decades after the collapse of the Roman administration in Britain’.
The academics will do their best to explain who he is and why he’s there, but who found him? Take a bow, Sue and Mick Washington, of the Maidenhead Searchers.