On the winter solstice, as the year draws to an end, it seems like a good time to look back at some of the most interesting finds recorded by the South and West Yorkshire office this year. The 151 finders who recorded in South and West Yorkshire this year added an amazing 3652 objects to …more
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Detecting Yorkshire’s Past – PAS Display at the Yorkshire Museum
Over the winter period, a collection of artefacts found by members of the York and District Metal Detecting Club were displayed in the Yorkshire Museum Foyer case. This was a great opportunity to get some really amazing finds on display as well as telling some excellent stories from the people who found them. It was …more
Goodbye from the North & East Yorkshire Headley Trust Intern
My time as a Headley Trust intern with the Portable Antiquities Scheme has come to a close! No more ridiculously long blog posts about coins or pretty spindle whorls from me (for now). I have loved every second of this internship from start to finish. Without it, I would never have explored my love for …more
The Wonderful World of Spindle Whorls
It’s hard to think of an object that’s more common across centuries of human existence around the world than the humble spindle whorl. Often maligned, these incredible objects are the day-to-day evidence of what many of our ancestors spent a lot of their time doing. Spindle whorls are perforated weights which would have been used …more
Hello from the new North and East Yorkshire Finds Liaison Assistant
Hello all! My name is Adam Rivett, and I am the new Finds Liaison Assistant for North and East Yorkshire working with the excellent Portable Antiquities Scheme team based out of the Yorkshire Museum in York. I expect most of you already know our amazing Finds Liaison Officer Rebecca Griffiths so I’m sure you also …more
Spotlight On… A Henry II Penny
This blog post is part of a new series we’re calling ‘Spotlight On…’ where we examine PAS finds in context. We’ll aim to shed some light on what was happening in the world during the first life of these finds. This week, the spotlight falls on a twelfth-century coin. Let’s explore the events that were …more
Introducing North & East Yorkshire’s Headley Trust Intern!
Hello! I’m Eve Donlon, the current Headley Trust Intern for North and East Yorkshire. I work as part of the Portable Antiquities Scheme team alongside Finds Liaison Officer Rebecca Griffiths (and am based across the hall from the amazing curatorial team of the Yorkshire Museum). Over the next few months, I’m hoping to share some of our work with you here and on the PAS social media, including over at my Twitter account (@YORYM_Intern).
Eighteenth Century Coin Weights and Counterfeit Coins
Earlier in 2020, the South and West Yorkshire PAS office recorded an interesting coin weight, SWYOR-80FFA8, which was probably made locally in Sheffield. In this blog, SWYOR volunteer Diane Gourley looks into the history and local connections to the manufacture of this object in a little more depth. The post medieval coin weight SWYOR-80FFA8 is …more
Double Header: Stud-ying in Roman Yorkshire
The Portable Antiquities Scheme database has, to date, recorded nearly 1.5 million objects of all periods and materials (Fig 1). With over 46,500 examples, brooches are the third most common of these (Fig 2). Roman brooches in particular account for 31,456. That’s nearly 70%. Fig 1: Number of objects and records geld on PAS database. …more
A Medieval Heraldic Harness Fitting from Yorkshire
This colourful find, a medieval heraldic harness fitting dating from c. 1250-1400, caught our attention in the South and West Yorkshire office. The finder, Ian Cushnie, kindly provided his own research in identifying the family whose arms it depicted. Building on that research, this post by Graham Rawson (PAS volunteer, SWYOR) seeks to give some …more
