More Metal Detectorists Want Rewarding

Yorkshire Museum is appealing for donations to help raise £30,000 to buy a gold torc found in 2011 by an artefact hunter  at Towton, near Tadcasterin North Yorkshire. This is the second one from what is by all accounts a very "productive" site being exploited here for collectables and "Treasure". Earlier other (?) metal detectorists Andy Green and Shaun Scott had found a second one here in 2010 (probably why the second bloke was searching the site). The Yorkshire Museum in York purchased the first bracelet in 2012 for £25,000.

The second has been valued at £30,000. The museum has raised half of the £30,000 but said if it could not find the rest by the end of September the torc could be sold on the open market. [...]  The museum believes the bracelets, made of twisted gold, could have belonged to a leader of the Brigantes tribe, who ruled most of North Yorkshire during the Iron Age. Natalie McCaul, curator of archaeology at the museum, said: "They are, quite simply, incredible finds, and represent some of the earliest gold objects ever found in this region. 

Then the cheap narrativisation:

 "They are helping us to re-write the history of pre-Roman Yorkshire, as we can now say for the first time with any certainty that there were people of significant wealth living here in the Iron Age." 

Having them in the museum, it is said, will help archaeologists "try and find out more about Yorkshire during this period". I would have thought that you could do that without physically having two bits of twisted gold in a glass case. And if it gets sold on the open market it will somehow be impossible to research the Brigantes or whatever?

Related Stories

• Gold bracelet stays in Yorkshire  01 February 2012
• Appeal to save Iron Age treasure  22 November 2011, 

Another related story:  'Torc of Towton Branded a fake', Selby Times 17/12/2009.
This one was also found "while detecting on a riverbank near Towton – the site of a bloody War of the Roses battle in 1461"  in July 2008. The findspot also yielded

two gold coins from the Iron Age and a Viking ring, worth about 1,000 in total, but [the finders] agreed to waive the cash after failing to reach an agreement with the landowner over ownership" (eh?). During an inquest held in Selby on Friday, [...]  the three men admitted originally lying to British Museum liaison officer Amy Cooper about the exact location of the find to stop others raiding the site. Metal detecting since the 80s, Andrew said he had found items worth a total of 20,000 in that time. Coroner Geoff Fell ruled the items were classed as treasure, adding: "I don't have a clue how the torc came to end up in this river. But I'm convinced it's a forgery." [...] The Independent Treasure Committee will decide the exact value of the fake torc and later decide its final resting place.  

 All very odd, eh? But now (Richard Harris, ' Treasure found at sites in Escrick and Towton near York' York Press 13th October 2010):

Last year, an expert from the British Museum said the torc was not from that era as it was too shiny and not weathered enough. But [Professional archaeologist] John Buglass ["who is acting as a consultant to Andy and Shaun and who previously worked on the raising of the Mary Rose"] said experts from both Bonhams and Sothebys believed in its authenticity. He said the colour of the torc was wrong because Andy had made the mistake of cleaning it. He said the discovery of the Iron Age bracelet tended to enhance the authenticity of the torc.

See my earlier discussion here.