Wednesday 18 March 2020

BM, One of the Highlights of a year of British Metal Detecting, Provenance: "dumper truck"


If dealers Grebkesh and Runn tried to use
"from a dumper truck" as a provenance...
David Sanderson, 'Treasure island: metal detectorists enjoy bumper year' Telegraph March 17 2020
A 1,100-year-old brooch wrenched from history by a tipper truck and dumped as part of a landscaping scheme is one of the highlights of a year of British metal detecting. The early medieval silver brooch decorated with zoomorphic beasts was discovered by a metal detectorist near Great Dunham in Norfolk during 2019. It was then established, however, that the soil it was found in had been transported from another, as yet unknown, part of the region. “The circumstances of the discovery are odd,” Michael Lewis, who is in charge of the Portable Antiquities Scheme on behalf of the British Museum, said. “It is an interesting brooch though and could have links with the Pentney brooches in the museum’s collection.”
So the PAS records artefacts said to have been found in Palestine, 1847-1915 coins in a piano, and a loose object rattling round in a dumper truck that - like an artefact on eBay - could have come from anywhere. So whatever happened to the dream of the Founding Fathers that this expensive Scheme for puffing artefact hunters and collectors was supposed “to raise awareness among the public of the educational value of archaeological finds in their context and facilitate research in them”? What context is a dumper truck?


4 comments:

Brian Mattick said...

“The circumstances of the discovery are odd,” said Michael Lewis of the PAS.

An odd phrase, in my opinion. Does he mean "Crosby Garrett odd"?

Paul Barford said...

Dumper truck odd

Hougenai said...

PAS odd?

It tells it's own story when the '300g Gold armlet from St Bees' is mentioned in a press release but is 'hard to find'(aka not on) the database.

Hougenai said...

It is there, just not easy to find.
https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/962778

 
Creative Commons License
Ten utwór jest dostępny na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 3.0 Unported.