Buried Treasure 2

Hello and welcome. I ended my introductory session on the topic of metal detectors. Now they developed for a military kit, detecting and sweeping for landmines. Heavy and cumbersome initially, but occasionally used by archaeologists. But in the 1970s, cheaper and lighter kit became available and that started the fast-growing and very popular hobby of metal detecting. By and large, metal detectorists work in organised clubs. They belong to one of a couple of national organisations. There's the National Council for Metal Detecting and the Federation of Independent Detectorists, who set a code of conduct and members of those clubs seek permission from landowners before they detect etc. But there are a few unscrupulous people who got into this as treasure hunters, in it for profit. They don't care about heritage, they just want to find something valuable and to sell it. Known as Nighthawks. Now archaeology's view of metal detectorists has changed a little bit, but it was divided shall we say. There were those who thought they should be banned and others, which I think are in the majority now, who see the usefulness and embrace the technology. And fair to say that metal detectorists view of archaeologists has likewise been polarised. Some see archaeologists as being high-handed and obstructive, thinking only they have the right to excavate material etc. So you can see there is a potential conflict of interest. But the rise in metal detecting has resulted in a surge of finds, some of them of great importance. This hoard, the Cunetio Hoard, was found in 1978 in the Kenwick Valley near Mildenhall in Wiltshire. And it's called the Cunetio Hoard because there was a Roman town called Cunetio very nearby. Almost 55,000 Roman coins were found in a large pot. In 1983, two detectorists found some gold and silver coins in Wanbra in Surrey. They reported their finds to Guildford Museum and Guildford Museum wanted to keep the location strictly secret. But the site came out at the coroner's inquest into the coins and then it was published in the press and the Nighthawks descended. And the site was ravaged. There was immeasurable damage done to it. The site was a Romano-Celtic temple that had been in operation from the 2nd century to the 4th century. But before that, it had been a British Iron Age sacred site. Police later recovered some of what had been taken, including some coins, some sceptre handles and some headdresses, all from the late Iron Age. These chains were part of a priest's headdress that would have gone over a leather cap. But they reckon they only recovered about 10% of what had been taken. Now you do get finds from a variety of sources. Builders working on renovations have made finds in roof timbers and inside chimneys and that sort of thing beneath floorboards. Farmers ploughing their fields have turned up a considerable amount of things. A man called Ken Allen, in 2004, was digging a pond in his back garden at Thornborough in Gloucestershire and he found a pot containing over 11,000 Roman coins. There were even some Roman coins found in a window box in North London. They'd obviously not been buried in the window box. The assumption has to be that they came in with the soil, but then where did the soil come from of course? So that site has been lost. There are even tales of people having dreams that have led to discoveries. The story I like is the legend of John Chapman, the peddler of Swaffham, who dreamt that if he went to London Bridge, that there he would hear news to his advantage. So he packed his bag, took his dog and off he went to London, walking. Norfolk to London, so a little bit over 100 miles. He spent the day lurking on London Bridge and at the end of the day a shopkeeper, who'd been watching him all day, came over and said, what are you doing? And he told him about the dream and he said, well, if you believe in dreams, what you should do is go to Swaffham and you'll find an apple tree in the garden of a cottage belonging to a man called John Chapman and beneath the tree there is buried some gold. So John Chapman goes home, digs beneath his apple tree, lo and behold there is a pot with a few gold coins in it. He took the pot, which had got an inscription on, which he couldn't read, and he put that on his stall to try and sell it. And a monk came along, had a look at it and said, do you know what it says? And Chapman said, no, I don't understand it. And the monk translated it for him and it said, under me doth lie another far richer than I. So John Chapman goes back to his apple tree, digs a bit deeper and finds an even bigger pot full of gold coins. So a lovely little story. But strangely enough, in an inventory of repairs carried out to the parish church at Swaffham, parish church of St Peter and St Paul, it says that in 1452 a new North Isle was built and the man who paid for it was John Chapman. And in 1462 John Chapman served as church warden at the parish church. So we do have a John Chapman and he's certainly very wealthy. There is a window in the church which is thought to show John Chapman and his wife and one of the pew hens is carved rather nicely with the peddler and his dog. So, you know, there are chance discoveries, but most discoveries are the result of deliberate searches. I mean, archaeologists can use a range of techniques, aerial photographs, geophysics, field walking and, of course, metal detectorists often will discover sites. The number of cases that have been reported under the Treasure Act since it came into force, that 1996 Act, came into force in 1997. Of all the treasure cases that have been reported under that scheme since 1997, 95% were finds by metal detectorists. That is the impact that they have had on recent discoveries. But, of course, finding something, that's only the beginning of the story. What archaeologists can do is establish the all-important archaeological context and then breathe life and meaning into finds and that will involve a whole team of experts with specialist skills and knowledge. There's the archaeologists themselves, there's the museum curators, there are the find specialists, there are the scientists, there are conservators. Then when finds go on display, we have a lot of other people who are involved, other professionals, museum curators, of course, education officers, exhibition designers. That legal definition of treasure, which we looked at in my introductory session, talks mostly about gold and silver. But all finds are potentially important. Tiny fragments of pot are not glamorous, not in themselves valuable, but in terms of telling us about daily life in the past, they're absolutely priceless. We find fragments of food that are attached, which will tell us about diet and about cooking methods. It can also tell us a lot about the extent of trade, where did the pottery come from, where was it made, and crucially, it provides us with dating evidence. Styles change and they change quite rapidly, so a tiny pot shirt can tell you pretty closely when it was made. Some fragments of pot and some glass has been excavated recently at Tintagel in Cornwall and at Dinas Perwis in the Vale of Glamorgan, that shows that there were high status settlements thriving in those areas between the 5th and the 7th centuries. They've found imported luxury items, spices, wine, olive oil. In amphora, there's been imported from the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Now this period, the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, this is the period of post-Roman Britain, when it was once believed such lifestyles had vanished, and for which we have hardly any documentary evidence. It's the finds that are rewriting history for this period over recent years, and a lot of finds are not actually covered by that Treasure Act definition, but they are recorded as a result of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Now this was a voluntary initiative, it was designed to encourage amateur finders to report their discoveries, and it came in alongside the Treasure Act. It was a recognition that metal detectorists in particular unearthed large numbers of potentially important objects. If you talk to metal detectorists, they will tell you they're not digging up gold and silver coins every day, that mostly what they find are rusty nails and old Victorian belt buckles, but they are turning up a great deal of finds. And how many metal detectorists are there in the UK? Well if you look at the membership of the various clubs, we're talking about in excess of 30,000 people, so it's not surprising that they're contributing to the finds that we have. And that Portable Antiquities Scheme is something I shall return to in our next session. If you've enjoyed this video, hit the like and subscribe buttons, and click the notification bell to be informed when the next video is published.