Treasure Trove of 800 ‘Exceptional’ Iron Age Artifacts Discovered in England
The collection, which dates to the first century C.E., includes items ranging from elaborately decorated horse harnesses to ornate cauldrons
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Elaborately decorated horse harnesses, ceremonial spears, ornate cauldrons, bridle bits and hundreds of other 2,000-year-old artifacts have been unearthed in England.
Experts say the hoard is one of the largest and most significant Iron Age finds in all of the United Kingdom—and it has the potential to reshape historians’ understanding of wealth, travel, status and trade among Britain’s tribes during that period.
The discovery was announced Tuesday by Historic England, Durham University and the British Museum.
“It has been a once-in-a-lifetime find for everyone involved,” says Keith Emerick, an inspector of ancient monuments at Historic England, the British government agency that funded the excavations, to the Guardian’s Mark Brown.
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A metal detectorist named Peter Heads stumbled upon the hoard in December 2021. He was using the device to scan the ground in a field near Melsonby, a village in North Yorkshire in northeast England.
When Heads started digging, he realized he’d discovered something important—and he decided to get in touch with Tom Moore, an archaeologist at Durham University.
When Moore arrived at the site, he also immediately realized the significance of the find. He approached Historic England and secured £120,000 (roughly $155,000) to excavate the area. That work took place in 2022, and researchers have been analyzing the more than 800 items in the cache ever since.
The artifacts likely date back to the period when the Roman emperor Claudius was invading Britain. Experts think the items belonged to the Brigantes, a tribe that controlled much of northern England during the Iron Age.
Researchers found at least 14 horse harnesses, which were likely used to pull ancient chariots or wagons. The harnesses were decorated with colorful glass and Mediterranean coral, which suggests their owner was a wealthy, high-status individual with connections throughout Europe and the Roman world.
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They also unearthed iron tires and other vehicle parts, as well as a cauldron that was likely used as a wine mixing bowl. The cache includes the first evidence of four-wheeled wagons in Iron Age Britain, which raises new questions.
“We’re going to have to spend years thinking, what did these vehicles look like, where did they come from?” Moore tells the Guardian.
Over time, some of the artifacts had corroded together to form a tangled mass, which researchers had to carefully extract. They suspect these items may have been placed in a bag together.
Many of the artifacts had been burned or deliberately broken, which adds to the theory that they belonged to an elite person. They may have been included in a funerary pyre, though researchers didn’t find any human remains.
“This is symbolic—it is not just throwing something away,” Moore tells the London Times’ Jack Blackburn. “It is something we’re familiar with from the Iron Age where people ritually destroyed things. What we’ve got here is it on a grand scale.”
The discovery of such obvious symbols of wealth and power is significant for another reason: It complicates the long-held assumption that northern England was poorer than the southern part of the country during the Iron Age.
“They challenge our way of thinking and show the north is definitely not a backwater in the Iron Age,” Moore tells the Guardian. “It is just as interconnected, powerful and wealthy as Iron Age communities in the south.”
Together, the artifacts are worth £254,000 (about $330,000). The Yorkshire Museum is launching fundraising efforts to keep the items in England. In the meantime, some of them will be displayed at the museum starting this week.
“By acquiring the hoard, we will be able to make it accessible to everyone,” says Andrew Woods, senior curator at the museum, to BBC News’ Jessica Bradley. “Working in partnership with others, we can learn more about this fascinating period, why the hoard was buried, how the objects may have been used,” as well as the identity of their owners.
