Thursday, 25 January 2018

Another UK Treasure Hunter Rewarded for Disturbing Site



BBC 'Barrow Bronze Age gold hoard declared treasure' 24 January 2018 A hoard of Bronze Age jewellery unearthed in Cumbria by two metal detectorists John Rigg and Darren Fine has been declared treasure.
 The 3,000-year-old haul of three gold rings and a bracelet were found buried under a stone last year on a ridge at an undisclosed site in Urswick, Barrow.
presumably therefore, they'd been hidden under the stone  some 3000 years ago, and the deposit only disturbed by the Treasure hunters. Now, oddly enough, although the PAS are normally keen to bulk out their database numbers by adding Treasure finds to it, if you search under this place name, although there are other Bronze Age finds on the database from there this one seems not to be there. Why would that be? The other Bronze Age finds precisely from Urswick - are these all being removed from the same site? And is this site on cultivated land, or from the pasture areas with visible stones - some forming what look like structures, what does it mean 'on a ridge'? Earthwork?  Do we have another case of targeting a known site?

Vignette: The PAS and the media will show you the goldie goodies, Obviously from an archaeological rather than sensationalist point of view, what is important is the context, which will be somewhere in this area of the Google Earth picture. Sadly however, the Scheme set up to instil a notion of the importance of recording artefacts in their contexts, sic, gives no idea at all about any of that beyond 'a ridge at an undisclosed site in Urswick, Barrow'.

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