British Museum showcases 2023-24’s most spectacular amateur treasure hunter finds

euronews (in English)

Amateur treasure hunters, from detectorists to mudlarkers, are uncovering remarkable historical artefacts across Britain, with the British Museum spotlighting their latest finds.

Transcript

00:00It's tempting to think that we've found everything, and we've found so much in a way that you

00:29can see why people think that maybe there isn't very much left to find. But there is

00:34an amazing amount of stuff that seems to be left. Things are being found all the time.

00:41Here we have a silver coin of the East Anglian king Athelstan II, who was also the Viking

00:54ruler Guthrum. He adopted Christianity and was baptised as Athelstan. This is the first

01:03silver coin minted by a Scandinavian ruler in Britain in the late 800s. Ordinarily a

01:15single silver coin wouldn't be treasure, and so anyone who found something like this would

01:20be able to sell it or keep it themselves. But because of the significance of this coin,

01:28and what it tells us about this particular moment in history, it's been declared treasure.

01:32So what I have in front of me is a middle Bronze Age hoard, about 3,300 years old,

01:47of bronze objects. And we get quite a few of these through found by metal detectorists. But

01:53what makes this hoard exceptional and special is that it contains a small anvil for working

01:59precious metal. And that's the earliest and first metal anvil found in Britain.

02:05So it's a really important new discovery.

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