Treasure: "oldest" Iron Age gold work in Britain!

BBC.com News; Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.) Wisdom Quarterly

Iron Age gold jewelry has been discovered by treasure hunters (Leekfrith torcs).

"Oldest" Iron Age gold work in Britain found in Staffordshire

Two friends have unearthed jewellery which could be the oldest Iron Age gold discovered in Britain.

Mark Hambleton, who went back to metal detecting after advice from his late father, made the find with Joe Kania, on Staffordshire Moorlands farmland.

 

The three necklaces and bracelet are believed to be about 2,500 years old [from around the time of the Buddha teaching in India and Central Asia].

 

Their find was declared treasure at an inquest led by coroner Ian Smith, who joked it was likely to be "worth a bob or two."

 

Julia Farley, of the British Museum, described the discovery, called the Leekfrith Iron Age Torcs, as a "unique find of international importance."

• For more on this and other Stoke and Staffordshire news
• WIKI: The torcs were made on the European continent, somewhere in the area of modern Germany or France, in the fourth or third century BC (400-250 BC). They are some of the oldest examples of Iron Age gold, and of Celtic ornament, ever found in Britain. They have been accredited by Julia Farley, Curator of European Iron Age Collections, Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum, who called them a "unique find of international importance."

"Invaluable insight"

Dr Farley, the museum's curator of British and European Iron Age collections, said: "It dates to around 400-250 BC and is probably the earliest Iron Age gold work ever discovered in Britain.

"The torcs were probably worn by wealthy and powerful women, perhaps people from the Continent who had married into the local community...." More

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