Articles about the Scheme in the Guardian
Suspected Viking burial fills a hole in English history
One of the great missing pieces of Britain's archaeological jigsaw may finally have fallen into place with the discovery of swords, ship nails and a silver Baghdad coin in a Yorkshire field. Tight security has been put on the site since metal detecting enthusiasts came upon what is thought to be the first known Viking ship burial south of Hadrian's Wall. An exploratory dig is being organised for traces of rotted timber and other fragments. "I am 95% certain it is a boat burial," said Simon Holmes, archaeologist at the Yorkshire Museum in York where the initial finds went on show yesterday. "If this is indeed the case, it will be the first discovered in England and therefore one of the most important Viking discoveries ever made in the British Isles." The trove was found in a ploughed riverside field, whose location is not being made public, by detectors who followed the regulations designed to protect archaeological sites. The 130 items were reported to the na...
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Treasure beneath your feet and under the waves
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Buried treasure on show
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Rare memento of Hadrian's Wall unearthed
The small bronze cup unveiled yesterday, found by two metal detectorists in a Staffordshire field, is the Roman equivalent of a snowstorm globe. The piece is exceptionally rare, of great historic importance, and beautifully crafted - but is essentially a souvenir of one of the most wind-blasted outposts of the Roman empire, Hadrian's Wall. The inscriptions in Latin include a name, Aelius Draco. Experts speculate he could have been a commander stationed on the wall. Only two similar examples are known. One was found in 18th-century Wiltshire, and another more than 50 years ago at Amiens in France. The Staffordshire find is inscribed with the names of four forts - Bowness (Mais), Drumburgh (Coggabata), Stanwix (Uxelodunum) and Castlesteads (Cammoglanna) - and is the only one of the three to include Drumburgh. The finders, Kevin Blackburn and Julian Lee, claimed in an email to the finds officer of the portable antiquities scheme to have unearth...
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New battle of Marston Moor
War has broken out at Marston Moor in Yorkshire, site of one of the crucial battles in the civil war. Recriminations are flying as thick as musket balls, after a metal detectorists' rally last weekend attended by almost 300 people. Battlefield historians are appalled by the event, even though it happened over a mile from the heart of the site where Royalist forces under Prince Rupert were routed by Cromwell and the Parliamentarians, in the evening of a battle which continued through a long July day in 1644. There have been reports of sackloads of musket balls being removed, though this is challenged by several sources who were at the rally. Just six musket balls were officially reported, and their sites logged. In fact little 17th-century material of any kind was found, although Roman coin and a bronze axe head were reported, with four pieces of silver. The exact sites of musket and pistol balls can be vital evidence for archaeologists, establishing...
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City archaeologist and museum director, Winchester
I have to say we've had some really very good things happen in the past year. We've mounted an exhibition, Treasure, of the spectacular gold iron age jewellery found locally two years ago. When the finds were declared treasure they went to the British Museum and we assumed that was the last we'd ever see of them, but the museum has been very helpful. We found that very encouraging, and we hope it shows a new approach to relations between a major national museum and a relatively small regional museum.We also managed to secure some lottery funding for the exhibition, £50,000, for things like improving security, which will be of tremendous long-term value to us and allow us to arrange more important loans in the future. We've bought audio guides, which at the moment are for this exhibition, but we can re-programme when it ends.It runs until Easter and it has been a tremendous success, we've had 10,000 extra visitors, double the normal number in this fairly quie...
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Bill to close legal loophole on buried treasures
West Country police recently turned out on a cold wet night, to follow up reports that two men were illegally digging on an important Roman site. A man with a metal detector was detained nearby, and hundreds of objects were recovered from his car and home. But of the extraordinary haul of Roman coins, scraps of armour and harness, a medieval purse carrier and a crushed Victorian silver thimble, only a tiny scrap of blackened Anglo-Saxon silver can be proved to be held illegally. The finds, more than 400 in all, are being studied by experts at the British Museum, but the incident increases the frustration at the present law shared by archaeologists, police and museum experts. Although amateurs using metal detectors are encouraged to report all finds, under the voluntary portable antiquities scheme, they are only legally obliged to report treasure finds of gold or silver or hoards of coins. Of the cupboard full of finds from the West Country case, only the sliver of silver ...
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Thieves pillage Iron Age fort
Nighthawks, archaeological thieves operating with metal detectors, have ransacked the slopes of one of Northumberland's most important Iron Age hilltop forts, Yeavering Bell. Working overnight, and on the far side of the hill from the nearest houses, they left the fort pitted with holes, 34 in all. Scraps of metal suggest they may have found and looted ancient bronze. The attack, on a site which has never been excavated, is one of the most determined in recent years, and has shocked archaeologists in an area which has so far been relatively free of the scourge. Lord Redesdale, head of the parliamentary committee on archaeology, who is also a landowner in the county, described the attack on the fort as tragic. "This is a national problem, and an area in which the government has been re ally feeble in coming forward with legislation." Although digging with a metal detector without the permission of the landowner is an offence, unless the nighthawks are caught in the act...
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Treasure trove law puts museums under pressure
The stunning success of the new treasure law, and the tenfold increase it has produced in the reporting of precious ancient finds, is emptying the acquisition funds of the British Museum and local museums struggling to add the objects to their collections. The treasure law annual report, released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, shows that 221 items of treasure were reported in 2000, compared with 24 a year before the medieval law of treasure trove was reformed in 1996. The downside is that the finders are entitled to compensation at the full market value and it is left to the British Museum, which has first refusal, or local museums to raise the money. The museum has an annual acquisitions budget for the entire museum of £100,000, and that is likely to be slashed in the current financial crisis. "The government is rightly boasting of the success and the national importance of this scheme, but is trying to run it on a shoestring," Roger Bland, a co...
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Lottery grant comes to rescue of archaeological research
The Portable Antiquities scheme, which was in danger of collapse as its initial pilot funding ran out, has been saved by a heritage lottery grant announced yesterday. Blank patches in the archaeological map of England and Wales will now be filled with a torrent of fish hooks, coins, buttons and bent spoons, as the scheme, which encourages amateurs using metal detectors to report their finds, is extended to cover the entire area. The heritage lottery fund yesterday announced a £2.5m grant, which, matched with £1.5m from the government, Resource, and the national museums of England and Wales, will allow the expansion. Recent important discoveries include a superb bronze age gold cup, found in Kent, and a unique Anglo- Saxon glass bowl, preserved unbroken in an oak bucket for 1,400 years. Roger Bland, who has been seconded from the British Museum to coordinate the scheme, said last night: "This is really good news for archaeologists, metal detector users, indeed an...
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