One That UK's Metal Detectorists Did Not Trash

Metal Detecting Greg
versus archaeology

ITV REPORT, ' ‘Incredibly rare’ grave of Iron Age ‘warrior’ unearthed' 29 January 2020

The “incredibly rare” 2,000-year-old grave of an Iron Age “warrior” has been unearthed by archaeologists in West Sussex The recently-revealed burial site, one of only a handful known in the south of England, featured an iron spear and a sword in a highly decorated scabbard. The grave was discovered during excavations ahead of the building of 175 new homes near Chichester. [...] Archaeologists are continuing to investigate this new discovery and hope to find out more about the identity and social status of the individual, and the local area and landscape around that time.

So it's a good job that the metal detectorists did not get there first and hoik out all the metal bits willy nilly. There's not much that metal detecting can tell us about the environment and site context around a hoiked metal artefact or two. A lot of 'metal detecting' is purely damaging and destructive.

But collectors need not fret, there's more than enough Iron Age swords on the internet market, so many that these products of the commercial exploitation of these "incredibly rare" archaeological contexts can be picked up quite cheaply, for a few hundred dollars only. Plenty on Catawiki, right under our noses...