A HOARD of Roman coins worth hundreds of pounds was unearthed in a farmer’s field in Sheffield - and this week was declared treasure.
The five republican silver denarii were discovered by a metal detector enthusiast on land at Plumbley Hall Farm, near Mosborough.
The find was reported to the authorities before the coins were seized by the British Museum - and on Tuesday assistant deputy coroner David Urpeth ruled they were the property of the Crown.
Mr Urpeth told Sheffield Coroner’s Court that the finder of the coins - Edward Bailey - would receive a cash reward, along with the landowner, Raymond Woolley.
They were unearthed between May 28 and June 3 last year. Read more.
A silver treasure from the 12th century has been found on the Baltic island Gotland, where over 600 pieces of silver coins have been unearthed, according to reports in local media.
“This is an amazing find. It’s unbelievable that treasures of this scale exist here on Gotland,” Marie Louise Hellquist of Gotland’s County Administrative Board (Länsstyrelsen) told local newspaper Hela Gotland.
The medieval treasure was uncovered last Monday, as the landowner was moving soil. Some 500 pieces of coin were discovered in the field, and following further searches conducted once archaeologists arrived on Wednesday, that figure has swollen considerably.
“In total we’ve reached 650 pieces, so far,” Hellquist said. Read more.
Row after row of silver bricks lie stacked aboard the sunken S.S. Gairsoppa, torpedoed in the North Atlantic by a Nazi U-boat in 1941. The Odyssey Marine Exploration salvage company this month announced it had retrieved 48 of the 240 tons of silver in the British merchant steamship’s hull.
The 412-foot (126-meter) Gairsoppa currently resides nearly 3 miles (4.7 kilometers) underwater—deeper than the Titanic. The World War II-era vessel’s silver is the heaviest and deepest precious-metal cargo ever retrieved from a shipwreck, according to Odyssey, which plans to return to the site to continue the salvage operation.
A ladder connects the cargo hold to the Gairsoppa’s deck. The ship’s holds are open, and its belly is splintered by the torpedo that sank it, but the Gairsoppa nevertheless sits upright on the seabed, largely intact, its paint still faintly visible.
A remotely controlled robotic arm lifts silver bullion from the Gairsoppa’s hold. Recovery of the bricks began in May 2012.
Crowned with anemones, the Gairsoppa’s brass stern compass retains its shine after 71 years.
In addition to the silver cargo, more than 1,700 tons of tea were listed in the ship’s manifest. Tea chests in the wreck are among the clues that helped Odyssey identify the wreck as the Gairsoppa. More.
A spectacular 2,000 year-old gold and silver hoard was uncovered in an archaeological excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Qiryat Gat region.
A rich and extraordinary hoard that includes jewelry and silver and gold coins from the Roman period was recently exposed in a salvage excavation in the vicinity of Qiryat Gat. The treasure trove comprising some 140 gold and silver coins together with gold jewelry was probably hidden by a wealthy lady at a time of impending danger during the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
Archaeologists at Tel Aviv University found the collection of gold, silver and bronze jewellery wrapped in fabric and hidden in the vessel, according to American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU), a group facilitating the cause of higher education in Israel.
Found at the ruins of a domestic settlement at Megiddo, which has multiple layers of remains of ancient settlements, the clay vessel dates back to Iron Age I, around 1100 BC, and was excavated in 2010.
“This vessel was actually excavated during the 2010 season, but remained uncleaned while waiting for a molecular analysis of its content (soil). When it was finally emptied during the summer of 2011, the pieces of jewellery appeared,” archaeologists of The Megiddo Expedition said in a statement.
Researchers believe that the way the ornaments were well preserved points towards mysterious circumstances, and that a clay pot could not have been the normal storage place for jewellery. Read more.
In the first exhibition of its kind, the Fitzwilliam Museum will relate the story of the quest for immortality and struggle for imperial legitimacy in ancient China’s Han Dynasty.
The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China (May 5-November 11) will feature over 350 treasures in jade, gold, silver, bronze and ceramics in the largest and most important exhibition of ancient royal treasures ever to travel outside China.
The Han Dynasty established the basis for unified rule of China up to the present day. To maintain this hard-won empire the Han emperors had to engage in a constant struggle for power and legitimacy, with contests that took place on symbolic battlefields as much as on real ones. While written accounts provide an outline of these events, it is through the stunning archaeological discoveries of recent decades that the full drama and spectacle of this critical episode in Chinese history has been brought to life. Read more.
THIEVES have stolen thousands of pounds’ worth of rare Saxon silver coins from the Museum of St Albans, which represent the rich history and heritage of the district.
St Albans District Council has said the 30 coins were taken from a locked display cabinet in the Medieval Gallery at the Hatfield Road museum.
It is thought the locks on the cabinet were broken before the coins, estimated to have an insurance value in the region of £12,000, were taken.
The council says the theft occured on or around the weekend of Saturday, January 7.
A sixth or seventh century silver hand pin, discovered in excavations at St Albans Abbey, were also taken from the same case.
The coins were part of a hoard of Saxon silver coins found at the Abbey Orchard in St Albans in 1969 during an excavation by the St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, within the area of the monastic buildings attached to the Abbey, prior to the construction of Abbey Primary School. Read more.
Evidence of a previously unknown Viking king has been discovered in a hoard of silver found by a metal detectorist, stashed in a lead box in a field in Lancashire.
The 201 pieces of silver including beautiful arm rings, worn by Viking warriors, were found on the outskirts of Silverdale, a village near the coast in north Lancashire, by Darren Webster, using the metal detector his wife gave him as a Christmas present. It adds up to more than 1kg of silver, probably stashed for safe keeping around AD900 at a time of wars and power struggles among the Vikings of northern England, and never recovered.
Airdeconut – thought to be the Anglo Saxon coin maker’s struggle to get to grips with the Viking name Harthacnut – was found on one of the coins in the hoard.
The Airdeconut coin also reveals that within a generation of the Vikings starting to colonise permanent settlements in Britain in the 870s – instead of coming as summer raiders – their kings had allied themselves to the Christian god. Read more.
