Search for Lost Hammer Led to Largest Cache of Roman Treasure Ever Found in UK | Hacker News Reader

Search for Lost Hammer Led to Largest Cache of Roman Treasure Ever Found in UK

smithsonianmag.com

111 pointsdiodorus24 comments

My favorite metal detecting story of all is the guy who goes out with his metal detector for the first time ever, hops out of the car, turns on the metal detector behind the car and instantly finds one of the most fabulous hoardes ever found.

"I parked up and got the metal detector out. There was an area of flat ground behind the car, and I thought, I’ll just scan this first, before I head out into the field. Literally about seven steps behind where I had parked, I found them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_torcs

I'm impressed with the guy's honesty - he stopped after finding only a few coins and phoned the police and local archaeological society. I can imagine it would've been tempting to scoop it all up and try to find a buyer. I'm glad he was rewarded for leaving it intact, and that he split his reward with the farmer.

There are UK treasure trove laws that requires a split I believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996

Quote: For the purposes of the Act, 'Treasure' is defined as being:

All coins from the same find, if it consists of two or more coins, and as long as they are at least 300 years old when found. If they contain less than 10% gold or silver there must be at least 10 in the find for it to qualify.

Two or more prehistoric base metal objects in association with one another

Any individual (non-coin) find that is at least 300 years old and contains at least 10% gold or silver.

Associated finds: any object of any material found in the same place as (or which had previously been together with) another object which is deemed treasure.

Objects substantially made from gold or silver but are less than 300 years old, that have been deliberately hidden with the intention of recovery and whose owners or heirs are unknown.

That Act is from 1996. The hoard was found in 1992. I, too, am impressed the guy reported it not knowing if he’d get anything and I’m super glad he did.

Treasure Trove goes back much earlier than 96. That act was just the latest

There were previous rules enacted by the Treasury in the 20th C, and also Common Law dating back at least 1000 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove#England_and_Wal...

Also people pay attention to the act as the police will prosecute: (sorry for Daily Mail link) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253991/Woman-coin-w...

Moreover, digging it all up would have destroyed the archaeological context. If he detected because he was a history buff rather than a collector, he wouldn't want to dig it all up.

It's nice that there are laws requiring the split.

A similar story happened with Sue[1] the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever unearthed. The archeologist who discovered it and did the work to unearth the bones and preserve them got nothing while the landowner got $7.6 million because he owned the land where they were found.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_(dinosaur)#Dispute_and_auc...

He did find a buyer: the British government paid £1.75 million as a reward, which he split with the farmer (landowner).

That seems much easier than trying to find a black-market buyer.

And you get the market rate

True it all worked out in the end - but I can imagine at the time thinking "Ah gold coins, I can probably sell this" not realising that a) that's illegal and b) if you reported it to the government that they'd give any reward.

Whenever my wife and I watch the show Time Team, we always joke that in the UK, you can just grab a shovel, walk out into just about any random field, dig a hole, and you will find at least _some_ sort of artifact.

"At this time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before around eight o’clock"

Slightly OT, isn't that Monty Python movie ageless?

In fact, like good wine, it only gets better with time. I gave The Life of Brian another view earlier this week (it's on Youtube!) and was awed by its prescience.

“The Roman Emperor wasn’t supplying Britain with new gold and silver coins, and in light of that, the population tried to get over this sudden cutoff in the supply of precious metals by making the existing supplies go further,” Guest said.

It was simple counterfeiting. One of the most frequently found objects hidden in old ruins is coin stamps - illegal counterfeiting equipment that got left behind when folks moved out/got overrun.

They'd clip (or even melt down) old coins, cast new coins with a lot of tin mixed in to extend it, and re-stamp an image. Or what they thought was the image; after 1000 years old coins were largely illegible. Folks would make up new images to match what they thought the old ones might be. So emperors turned into badgers or whatnot. You can even date some caches by the dates certain counterfeits started showing up?

For anyone who has watched the detectorists on the BBC:

> The metal detector he’d received as a retirement gift was meant to find a hammer lost on the farmland.

Apropos of the show (from last week):

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-42887063

I feel a bit bad for these guys, but it's also very funny.

Delightful show for anyone who likes muted English humor.

I feel like this needs a [1999] added, as that is when the cache was found and there are no new discoveries.

According to the article the cache was found in 1992.

Here's a lidar map of the cache location https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=TM1723675711 - right on the edge of coverage unfortunately. Lots of evidence of medieval field systems in the surrounding area. I bet there's lots more to be found around there, although I'm sure the area has seen plenty of detectorist activity since this find.

The story mentions 98% of the coins were "clipped" but the photo only shows a few that would fit the description.

Maybe it's my heritage, I'm not sure. Whenever I read about the Visigoths winning battles or killing a Roman Emperor, there's a part of me that is like "Hell yeah, you better watch yourself when you go strolling on Gothic territory. Roman Empire, we'll see about that."

For anyone else curious, £1.75M in 1992 is about $4.7M today.

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