portable antiquities

The Staffordshire Hoard has been one of the most staggering and inspirational discoveries in British history. Hundreds of stunning gold Saxon artefacts, all bundled into one stash and found over a thousand years later by a lone metal detecting enthusiast - it's a story that could have come straight out of an archaeological thriller. While the necessary steps are taken to secure their future, the treasures are being housed in Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery. Heritage Key talks to the museum's resident scholar Dave Simmonds about his thoughts on a momentous breakthrough in British heritage.

If seems that Britain (the Hoard made it to 'most viewed' on the BBC website today) - and Heritage Key (mine is definitely not the first blogpost on the topic) - can't get enough of the Mercian Treasure baptised 'the Staffordshire Hoard'. Realising what an incredible find this is - or standard archaeological procedure? - Birmingham University Archaeology published the actual unearthing of the collection of Anglo-Saxon hoarded wealth, at that point still looking more like little stones than the actual gems they are. In the video you see the archaeologists carefully searching the sand, digging up the precious artefacts... but help me out here and clarify; what is that - rather funny - apparatus? A metal detector on wheels?

Anyway, make sure to watch this great 'revealing' video by Birmingham University Archaeology, and applaud them for filming the excavation and making that large an amount of image material and information available on the web.

A massive haul of more than 10,000 Roman coins crammed inside a buried clay pot has been unearthed by an amateur metal detecting enthusiast - on his first ever treasure hunt, and this only a few days after it was announced the Vale of York Hoard was purchased by the British Museum. The silver and bronze 'nummi' coins, dating from between 240 AD and 320 AD, were discovered in a farmer's field near Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, last month. Experts say the coins have spent an estimated 1,700 years underground. The stunning collection of coins, most of which were found inside the broken brown pot, was uncovered by Nick Davies during a search of land in the Shrewsbury area - just a month after he took up the hobby of metal detecting.