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00:00This week we're in Sholdham in Norfolk and Norfolk we're told is the metal detecting
00:09capital of the country look at this absolutely amazing over the next hour we're hoping to find
00:16a myriad of treasures long lost to the soil beneath our feet we're going to tell you the
00:22history of this land and the stories of the people who lived who worked who fought and died here
00:28welcome to digging for treasure
00:30welcome to Norfolk and a huge hello to the Kingsland Metal Detecting Club thank you very much for being
00:57with us these guys have all been part of our field survey over the last 48 hours researcher
01:02henna is here lovely to see you she's going through all the finds that we've got and making a note of
01:07everything in the notebook and then the significant ones will come over here to the table of chronology
01:11and be looked at by our expert warm welcome please to dr. Helen geek from the british museum's portable
01:18antiquity scheme and one of the uk's leading archaeologists she knows her ruins from her relics
01:23raksha david's with us as well raksha give us the headlines what do we hope we define i'm really
01:28excited today because we're searching for the thing that i love the most everyday people this land has
01:35been farmed for millennia so we're looking for evidence of the people who've worked here okay
01:40loads to look forward to let's get straight out of shall we michaela what have you got as usual we've
01:45got a huge area to explore it's been a really dry summer and you can see that the ground is very hard
01:53and very dry which makes it quite challenging for our detectorists not only to find stuff but once they
02:00found it then to dig it up but we have already found 25 interesting objects including these two now
02:07we've got a musket ball here and a pistol bullet and what's really interesting is these are two things
02:14that would have been used for the same purpose but at completely different times so this musket ball we
02:19think is probably 17th to 19th century and the bullets would have been 20th century we don't think
02:26they would have been used in battle but they would have been used in agriculture probably for hunting
02:30or for protecting livestock from predators and hopefully we'll be finding lots of other artifacts
02:35that will span the ages now we've come to norfolk because it's known to be the best place in the uk to
02:42find artifacts it's a real hot spot and that's why we've come here the patchwork green of norfolk's
02:52landscape hides the deep scars of history from over thousands of years people have lived here since the
02:59ice age and traces of them are everywhere to be found this neolithic axe head is over six thousand
03:08years old it was found not too far away from here and it would have been a valuable tool vital for survival
03:14absolutely amazing for the looks of it is edward the third but the detail on it is absolutely incredible
03:28absolutely brilliant i'm just blown away we're uncovering the relics of our past revealing tales lost
03:37in time celtic gold coins from the iron age period over two thousand years ago and hopefully we'll find
03:47evidence of settlers right across the ages we think a huge roman settlement was right around here with a
03:57network of roads leading to villas and towns and this pot came from that time period found by a detectorist
04:05nearby in this field carefully and painstakingly pieced together and you can just imagine a small
04:12child running with this pot full of water it drops from her hands and smashes into pieces this is the
04:19story of the everyday people who lived in this landscape the promise of our past sits in every beep of
04:27machine in each lifting of the soil hidden history just waiting to be explored little button little
04:35trouser button and there's still much more to find and it's also tantalizingly close
04:43who knows what this land is yet to reveal
04:48well that's the history for you let's do the geography let you know exactly where we are about
04:52a 25 minute drive that way we get you to king's lynn and 35 miles directly behind our base camp here and
04:58you're in the fine city of norwich and actually over the course of the program we're going to be taking
05:02you all over the uk including cornwall there we're going to be joining a team of marine archaeologists
05:08as they search for new evidence of world war one shipwreck the ss volney we'll pick up with a couple
05:14who found love and then follow them as they learn the history of an amazing artifact discovered after
05:19analysis by the british museum and we'll talk about the discovery of one of the most historically
05:24significant holds in europe this is amazing the largest collection of iron age coins on record
05:31believe me you do not want to miss that and just to let you know we of course have permission to be
05:36here today we'll be speaking to jeff the landowner a little bit later on we always do this responsibly
05:41if you'd like to know about best practice in your area then all the information is available on our
05:46social media now i know raksha is very excited today let's head inside what have you got for us
05:51i'm here with the fines liaison officer helen you're the flo for this area and you've seen
05:56everything haven't you from prehistoric all the way to early medieval which is your speciality isn't
06:02it yes but as an flo we have to cover absolutely everything from from paleolithic right at the
06:07beginning to modern right at the end and that's what we've got on our timeline we've got two thousand
06:11years so many years already take us through the dates and what have we got here the earliest thing we
06:15have is this first century roman brooch that dates to around the time of the roman conquest
06:21say 2030 ad to maybe 70 80 ad and then nearly 2 000 years later we're up to 1938 with this uh
06:29rather messed up coin of georgia fifth but that's the thing all of these items they're lost items
06:34aren't they and that's what we're detecting for we're not actually digging under the surface we're
06:37just finding surface objects yeah and that's a great strength of the portable antiquities scheme and
06:42metal detecting uh because of course archaeologists who who dig holes into settlements and cemeteries and so
06:47on they're dealing either with something that's been deliberately put there like in a grave or
06:51most of the time it's just rubbish whereas metal detectorists deal with things that have been lost
06:56these are things you wouldn't throw away and so they're slightly different caliber i'm intrigued by
07:00these little bad boys because these were found directly below our teepee before we put it up so
07:05what have we got here well these two are animal bells and they would have been fixed around the necks of
07:09sheep cattle or even to the harnesses of heavy horses right um and they're they're very common finds um
07:15dating largely from the well this one dates to the 18th century or so if i prop it under the macro uh
07:23we can see that it's got groove decoration there you go can you see that yeah lovely and that's very worn
07:31but it appears on these 18th century ones like a kind of sunburst design so we can date that but in
07:37themselves they don't tell us an awful lot because we could work out that there were animals here
07:42what's the point of it but the point of this one is listen to this that's what history sounds like
07:47isn't it it is so rare that you can actually hear a sound that somebody would have heard in the past
07:52and what you have to imagine is that these are around the necks of lots and lots of animals and
07:56lots of people working the land it would have been a noisy busy place really different to today
08:01oh back there you back there actually i am i was going to go on my asmr meditation app
08:05all right let's add something else to the table of chronology gary would you like to come in and
08:08join us pop down what you've got there gary yep so this is a roman medusa head cameo uh found
08:14locally a few miles up the road okay let's get that right under the macro camera gary while helen
08:19does that give us an idea of what you know about that already yeah it's snake said medusa greek legend
08:25she would turn people to stone um and uh it's picked up during the roman period and carried on as a
08:30protective symbol to bring good luck and uh and such like and helen looks in quite
08:35good condition well it is in very good condition but you have to remember it is made of stone so
08:39it doesn't wear much see on the on the back it's just chipped stone yeah and this is almost like
08:45flint napping in the roman period it's what it's what archaeologists call roughly hewn
08:50okay i'll add that to my list and look at the groove around the outside that's where it would have been
08:54fixed in with a metal fixing i would guess which is now gone but as to what it was fixed in well it's
09:01quite big and heavy actually so i i think something like a pendant a brooch something like that not
09:08something like an earring perhaps uh it's it's really quite chunky and date wise well these are
09:13usually thought to be second century third century that's the heyday of roman gem cutting uh gary has
09:20it has it brought you good fortune uh well i've not been turned to stone as yet so i guess it must have
09:2510 years we're very happy that you're breathing and with us today thank you very much for that you've set
09:29the bar high with you medusa let's find out what michaela's got um don't let the team down michaela
09:34well i i've got this it's a bit of rock but you know i'm not going to feel inadequate because beauty
09:41is in the eye of the beholder and the beauty of this is that it could have so easily been overlooked and
09:46yet it's extremely interesting obviously it's not metal so it wasn't found by metal detecting it was
09:52found by ray here and his beady eyes because quite frankly ray i mean to most people that would look like
09:58just a bit of rock and yet it's so much more isn't it well it's fairly distinctive because it's a
10:03grey open stone which is lava stone and it's been worked on one side you can see the striations on
10:12there and it's part of a quern stone from the rhine so how would it have got here uh well just traded
10:19from from the rhine to britain they used them i think from the roman periods right way through the
10:23saxon through to medieval and a quern stone is a grinding stone isn't it that's right yeah it'd be
10:29one of two stones one would rotate on the fixed bottom stone um and that would grind corn to make
10:37flour and so that was probably the bottom one then you have the top one then you'd have just a turning
10:42thing that would turn it around and grind the corn there well is this something that most households
10:47would have had probably yes because everyone would have been very self-contained they'd be making
10:51their own flour thank you very much good find well spotted with your beady eyes thank you now we're
10:58looking for things on land but obviously you can find archaeological treasures underwater as well so
11:04after the break we'll be going out with marine archaeologists who are looking for treasure on the
11:09shipwreck ss volney welcome back to digging for treasure everything we find out in the field by
11:20the way it's been logged here by henna amanda's just bought in some melted lead which is signs of human
11:25occupation anything significant comes from here over uh to our timeline and if you've just joined us we go
11:30all the way back from 80 30 to about 1930 and i see you value this this is new isn't it yeah that's
11:37absolutely brand new that's just coming in we think that's 10th century but it needs verification
11:42but i want to play a little game a little game show right our version of animal vegetable mineral
11:49where we're going to test helen and see how the flos know how things are dated and what they're made of
11:56and that kind of thing now i'm a field archaeologist and i would 100 pick this up and i would say that this
12:01is a neolithic thumb scraper so you'd use this as a tool there'd be the serrated edges and you'd scrape
12:10away meat from the skin am i right helen well uh they might have used it but they certainly didn't make
12:19it because what you're looking for on a flint to show that it's been struck by a human struck off the
12:24larger paw is you're looking for the place that it's been hit with this with the hammerstone oh that's
12:29called the bulb of percussion i'm going to write that down bulb of percussion all the way around
12:34on this side no bubble percussion turn it over all the way around on the other side no bubble
12:39percussion sadly this has been struck in inverted commas by frost action it's it's peeled off the
12:46the larger pebble um and and they are weird things they're known as pot lid fractures because they look
12:51so much like a pot lid but it is entirely natural so half right i'll take that and this looks really
12:58modern to me am i right in thinking that i think you're right i mean i don't recognize this i don't
13:03know what it is and the way we approach things that when we don't know what they are is we say well what
13:07couldn't it be it can't be bronze age or iron age it's just completely wrong it's far too thin it's
13:12the wrong texture it's not roman it's got these little rivets which are not medieval in style it's
13:19post-medieval probably too late to be worth recording it on the pas database but i would run it past
13:25colleagues to see if we could positively identify it just to give the finder an identification even
13:30though we wouldn't record it i'd agree with that no bubble percussion you're right no bubble percussion
13:35now this gives us the opposite problem this is as you will no doubt uh work out it's an iron axe head
13:41so you know that it's not bronze age even in the iron age iron's really rare but it could be anything
13:46from roman to to 19th century the trouble is that it's a functional tool it's an axe the the need for
13:53these doesn't change much the form doesn't change much over the years so what can we go on well
13:58there's a bit of shape we can date these by looking at parallels from excavated archaeological
14:04contexts so we know the date of those and luckily somebody's gathered up all the roman ones in a big
14:09book so we can compare them and we just keep going through parallels till we find one that's the same
14:14shape add that to the timeline and we're adding things to this all the time so let's get from our tent
14:19out there to find michaela now some of the artifacts we're looking at from this site were found
14:24yesterday some were found this morning and others are being found as we go along like this one that
14:30dave has got a strong signal on and we genuinely don't know what's going to be in there there's only
14:36one way to find out isn't there and that's to get down on our hands and knees and start digging so off you
14:40go take it away is that it that's it it's just a piece of metal isn't it basically well it wasn't
14:50exactly treasure was it i mean you win some you lose some don't you dave but i'll let you go off
14:54let me know if you find something a little bit more interesting i'll try well from finding stuff
15:00underground to finding stuff underwater let's head off to the south coast with marine archaeologists
15:06that are looking at the shipwreck the ss volney which was sunk to the bottom after it was hit by a
15:11torpedo in world war one so we're here at port fallow on the south coast of cornwall and we're diving
15:27today on the record of volney which was a first world war merchantman which struck a mine a few miles
15:33offshore laid by german submarine came in here sank fortunately with no loss of life
15:40the volney has been dived a lot by many divers but there's still areas of it that haven't been
15:46properly explored and in particular what we're going to do is go and have a look for an anchor that was
15:50reported recently just off from the wreck which might be part of the ship we've got conflicting reports
15:56of what actually happened some say it found it on the way to port fallow some say it anchored up
16:00overnight and if we can find this anchor and possibly prove that it links to the volney it will prove
16:06that part of the story the volney is an interesting wreck because part of its cargo was ammunition and
16:13you can still find some of that ammunition down on the wreck today these are things that we found in
16:16the past so that is an 18 pounder shrapnel shell which i've remade when people find these they're not
16:23necessarily safe you do have to get them deactivated on the top here this is the nose fuse these are really
16:28interesting because they've actually got the date on 1917 and then when you remove these caps this
16:34middle ring here would have rotated and then that's the number of seconds of which the shell would have
16:39been airborne before the whole thing would have ejected its lead shrapnel balls into the air and
16:44these were actually used in the first world war in the trenches the idea being that you actually explode
16:48the shell in the air above the trench and it showers the enemy in lead shot so they're they're a really
16:53nasty weapon and then every now and then because the volney actually hit a mine when it sank
16:58you find exploded ones so these cases were very near the impact of the mine when it went off which
17:04probably made the wreck sink a little bit quicker than it probably normally would have done it's a
17:08dangerous cargo to be carrying ammunition
17:15lona is about 20 meters deep which isn't very deep but with the visibility it seems a lot deeper than
17:20it is as you go down it gets greener and then almost black and then out of the gloom this boiler
17:27appears and um it's all rusted and festooned with marine life when you shine a light on this
17:35it makes it seem that much more otherworldly it's a slightly frightening place
17:41a wreck site like the volney can be quite dangerous it's quite dark it's quite silty and there's an awful
17:46lot of razor sharp metal so you've got to be very careful where you put your hands and feet
17:53it's very good news isn't it because we found the anchor we were looking for which is very lucky
18:04because we couldn't see anything down there we're just rounding a corner and there it was sitting
18:09there and uh it's definitely of the right kind of age about 100 years old spotting in the right
18:14direction perhaps it was using the anchor it's a whole position against the wind it's always been
18:19a bit of a mystery why the ship is in the middle of this bay rather than up against the shore
18:25not the greatest of visibility it's kind of like wandering around a scrapyard at night
18:29in the fog it's just great to find something that no one's seen before probably just because of
18:34its location it's just a bit off of the wreck hidden on the side of a rock we've brought up a
18:40handful of the lead shot which are in the anti-personnel rounds so in those metal containers
18:46in the middle of the shell these are the actual balls that would get ejected when the timer head
18:50goes off this is what would intended to be sprayed all over the ground to try and kill as many enemy
18:57troops as possible so people always used to uh wonder about the british army helmet the tin
19:04hat the brody helmet with this wide brim thinking this would be really silly design the reason for
19:10it was that it was protection precisely against these shrapnel shells exploding above actually the
19:16wide brim probably saved many lives there's an awful lot still down there but yeah it's just a bit of
19:22history really what i'm really thinking now is would it be great to get in again where's the next wreck
19:31can we start somewhere on the way back it's endless fueling of excitement every time you see one of
19:35these sites and then solve another mystery and find something new and it's an addiction really
19:46it's fascinating isn't it and still so much to find raksha and a reminder as well i think of the
19:51brutality of the war well exactly and when you think of the first world war you think of primarily trench
19:56warfare but actually it's the naval battles as well yeah lots to learn uh let's take you back to the
20:01timeline because we've had to double board it there's so much coming out of the ground
20:05this is new isn't it oh i'm particularly excited about this because this is a roman tessera and that
20:10is a piece of a mosaic or a tessellated pavement and that came from only 20 meters away from where
20:16we're standing so we could really be in a roman back garden we could be in a roman back garden yes
20:21uh it's most probably being bought in by the plow and being chucked around don't ruin it don't ruin
20:25it russia so helen you've got a beautiful find haven't you under the macro yeah under the macro but
20:31it's quite uh worn so it's quite hard to see there i'm going to point at it on the the screen this is
20:37like jewelry for horses it's a horse harness pendant this is a loop at the top so it fits on a rain or
20:42something like that dingle dangles and it's the shape of a shield and inside is a really difficult to
20:47see animal in profile looking this way so we've got the head here and an open mouth the body here
20:53a couple of feet at the bottom and up here is a big bushy tail curving over the back so what kind of
20:59animal would that be then well we're we're in the 13th century here we're right at the beginning of
21:05maybe heraldry so it's like a heraldic animal not perhaps a real animal but i think it looks very much
21:11like a squirrel let's bring philip in because you've got something you've found locally it's a spout
21:16a pouring spout from a newer okay shaped as a similar to a dog's head what do you think of
21:22that hello i can see your eyes are lighting up they're nice funny little objects with this long
21:26tail that is is is so long because they're soldered on to a ewer which is a kind of closed jug like a
21:32tankard with a spout what's nice about them is this this cute little you know it's the dog spitting out
21:36the drink here um it's still blocked with earth but that's where the the liquid would have come out
21:42there's loads of these uh and they're all pretty much the same with these rather schematic animal heads
21:46now that's the thing isn't it people think that big manufacture of items is much later
21:51but actually it's much earlier than we think yeah these are mass produced they're they're cast in
21:56molds and knocked out by the dozen there's loads of them and they're all very similar and where's
22:00that go on the timeline oh well this is about 1500 ad so it's about there it's the kind of thing that
22:05would have been used by maybe early tudor okay well philip congratulations and i know philip will put
22:11that on the portable antiquity scheme and all that is helping us to build the most comprehensive picture
22:15of the past that we've ever had philip thank you we've got the easy job today should we go out and
22:20find what michaela's i'm heading into the teepee because i've just been handed one of our finds
22:26which is this it's an edward iii coin and you know it always amazes me how many of these coins we're
22:33finding but then again look at the size of it and if you think back in the 14th century there would
22:38have been far more farm workers working these fields than there are nowadays anyway i'm going to take
22:43it into helen and we'll find out a bit more about it after the break see you in a minute
22:55welcome back to digging for treasure this is looking impressive our timeline building beautiful
23:00it's filling up and i've brought something along from outside helen's been looking at it during the
23:04break and it was found by michael give us a wave well done michael st edward the third coin that's
23:10right yeah and i can show you how we know that uh first of all we can see we've got the crowned head
23:15of the king he probably wouldn't have looked like this it's a kind of schematic portrait and at the
23:19top there's a cross and then next to the cross his name starts e d w there and then the rest is a bit
23:26smudged and worn um but it ends in us u s so that's edward us in latin edward in latin and then we have
23:34r-e-x rex king in latin and then after that is a n g so that's for anglorum uh edward king of the english
23:45and if we flip it over you can find out where it's minted ah so c-i-v-i kivi t-a-s tas kivitas city of
23:58l-o-n you can't see the d-o-n for the rest of london there because it's worn away but that's what it
24:05would have been city of london and alan it surprises me how many coins we're finding i know there were
24:11more people in the fields but it seems quite careless to drop quite so many coins yes but
24:15there were an awful lot of coins minted there was over a million pounds in circulation at at the time
24:20of edward iii and if you transfer that into pennies because there's 240 pennies to a pound at that point
24:26it's 200 300 million pennies wow let's get to some of the videos that our lovely viewers have
24:32been sending in here's the first one for you helen hi my name's chris i'm from bolton i've been detecting
24:38now for about two years i found a few hammered coins lots of different artifacts i do get the
24:46occasional unusual item and just recently up in northumberland i found this i was told that it was
24:54called a flail i'd love to know more about it it's history yeah is it a flail well i'm afraid it's
25:01not a flail a flail is a tool that's used for hitting grain after it's harvested before you winnow it it
25:07kind of wax the grain and separates it from the chaff what she's got is a mace which is also a
25:13whacking tool but i'm afraid yes it's a tool for a human on the head a bit more violent yeah they're
25:19medieval in date and they they do have a certain kind of ceremonial quality to them as well like
25:24a modern mace does you know you think of the mace of the house of commons or something like that
25:28they're they're an interesting thing we don't find too many of them that's not blood on the end was it
25:36we've got another video let's see this one my name's henry otherwise known as griff vines i'm 14
25:41years old and i've been metal detecting for two years i go metal detecting with my family
25:46mom i found a hammered oh my god i found a hammered dad i found a hammered oh my god
25:53i'm one lucky chap i love metal detecting so much so much so that i've chosen history as my gcse choice
26:00next year recently on the rolling hills of derbyshire near my house i found a roman fibula i would love to
26:07know more about it well henry you come to the right place by the way we love your enthusiasm um what do you
26:13think helen well fibula is one of those kind of slightly old-fashioned words for brooch um we we
26:18call them brooches these days because english is easier than latin for most of us and it looks to
26:22me like it's a type called a polder hills brooch a roman brooch of the first second century uh so
26:28early roman so it's a fantastic find polder hills have got a particular distribution which i'd have to
26:33look up to know whether derbyshire's an outlier or not but roman brooches show brooch fashions across
26:38the country so it's terribly important to know where each one was found to build up a pattern of
26:43what was it about roman people that was causing them to wear different brooches can i just say
26:47though i think we ought to bottle that enthusiasm and i think it's a really good reminder to us all
26:53isn't it whatever you're interested in just remember that enthusiasm of youth how excited you get when
26:59you find things for the first time you've not lost that have you a lot of people say that and also to
27:05say we're currently in england and the rules are different in england and wales to scotland and
27:09northern ireland if you're interested in getting into this sort of thing all the information is
27:13available on our social media what we're going to do now right we're going to tell you about a couple
27:17that found love over a metal detector and went on to unearth something even more beautiful oh yes
27:23excellent my name is liz and this is my amazing husband ian
27:46liz loves detecting and from that i i love it too
27:50ian had put a message on metal detecting forum that he had a new permission uh and a new metal
27:57detector uh but he didn't know how to use it so i sent him a message saying um i'll show you how to
28:02use your metal detector if you let me on your permission and that's how i met my wife she came
28:08that day uh insulted me and my metal detector and it's it's just gone from there it does feel like it
28:16was all meant to be we decided to come to sheriff hutton the family home of the nevels which was
28:26richard iii's wife it's that chance that you are going to find something of significance and i certainly
28:37did i found something incredible a pure gold miniature book this is the spot where i just
28:44stepped onto the field and found it i could see these two medieval faces looking back at me
28:51and then i started to think it was something quite special i knew by the style of the engraving that it
28:57had to be medieval we've been told that the british museum will be looking at it and drawing up their
29:04own report i'm really really excited to be able to see it again let's get there then yep
29:19i'm kevin leahey i'm a national advisor with the portable antiquity scheme with the british museum
29:25and i deal with early medieval metal work
29:32nervous
29:41here you are you meet again we can start by saying it didn't come from a christmas cracker we can rule
29:48that out straight away it's a lovely little object uh 15th or early 16th century date it's made of
29:56gold it shows leonard and saint margaret of antioch and of course the two saints are related to women
30:05my guess is that this came from the end of a silk bookmark and this would have belonged to an
30:10aristocratic woman her day would have been centered on her religious observances we were wondering
30:16because of uh where we found it outside um sheriff hutton castle um and the difficulties that we we
30:23know through history of um anne neville getting pregnant whether it might be connected to her
30:29there's a chance yes but we could never prove that she belonged to anne neville i mean it would be nice
30:34to think so is it possible to hold it one more time before it goes away again yes that's fine with me
30:40it means a lot to uh to liz i'm more intrigued with the the cover personally i'm fascinated by the cover
30:52of the book but there you go thank you um i just i feel connected to the person who owned it and how much
31:01must have meant to them this brought her comfort um and hope that she would get pregnant and to
31:07i've been the first person to find it it means a lot i've never seen anything like this before in
31:15the form of a little book which is delightful
31:24what a gorgeous story but i'm here with ian richardson you're the senior treasure registrar at
31:30the bishop museum what does your job entail my team and i at the bm oversee all the objects that are
31:37reported as potential treasure in england and we also manage part of this treasure process for fines
31:42from wales and northern ireland as well essentially we maintain a registry of these artifacts and then
31:47we liaise with the fines liaison officers who are often the ones taking them in and the coroners who
31:52have the ultimate legal authority to determine whether or not something is treasure and then what
31:58happens basically we have something called uh the treasure act 1996 uh that defines a certain criteria
32:04the objects that are discovered have to meet in order to be classed as treasure and if they meet
32:10this criteria then um and the coroner agrees and declares it treasure that means that a museum is able
32:16to acquire it for the public good so um they often have to raise money to do so but um it means that these
32:22things get safeguarded forever in perpetuity so that we all benefit from these discoveries so they're
32:27national treasures they're part of our history but to me this is a item of treasure it's a beautiful
32:35flint axe napped beautifully from a large block of flint this is the business end here this is the
32:42sharpened edge and it it might have been fixed or it could have even been held in somebody's hand
32:49it's a bit like a swiss army knife of the neolithic i mean surely this is treasure too
32:54uh yeah well i would say it's it's treasured certainly to some it would have been treasured
32:58by the person who made it and treasured by the person who found it but it doesn't meet the legal
33:03definition of treasure which means there's no obligation on behalf of the finder to report it
33:08but we certainly would encourage them to do so to take it to their finds liaison officer get it recorded
33:12with the portable antiquities scheme and potentially even consider donating it to a museum
33:18because that's another avenue for material to end up in these collections
33:20it's interesting helen isn't it what um ian was saying there about treasure and value because i
33:26know value is a slightly uncomfortable term in archaeological circles is there ever a time
33:31that monetary value is important to you there is one instance and that is when a museum wants to
33:38claim something that's been declared treasure which can be impossible for some small museums
33:43so so that is when monetary value has to come crashing into my job and it's never nice helen thank
33:49you for answering that so honestly should we go back to coin corner let's okay we've got vic and bob
33:53with us hello guys you've changed a bit by the way it's vic and bob's comedy coin corner we're going
33:59to they've been out in the fields today uh searching for us and they've found a really interesting
34:03cup farthing helen tell us about that you've got it under the macro there yes because it's absolutely
34:08minute this is cut from an ordinary circular penny cut into four so forthing farthing that's where the word
34:15comes from and the penny was designed to be cut it was it had a cross on the back which had a space
34:21in the middle so you can cut it and you can see the line of the cross there and the groove down the
34:27right down the edge where it's being cut along and these are almost all from the reign of henry the
34:32third uh who reigned for most of the 13th century and you can see his name on the other side
34:38we've got the n the r the i and the c henricus henry and latin and how much would that be
34:46worth well if you earned the kind of rough averages that you earned about one or two pennies a day so
34:53this is a quarter or an eighth of what you'd have earned today let's say it's the equivalent of a ten
34:57pound note ten pound notes so someone carelessly dropped the ten pound note in the field and didn't
35:02bother looking for it well they probably did bother looking for it but it's extremely hard to find it's
35:06extremely hard to find even with a metal detector they need a vicar bob they can find anything they
35:10do i'll tell you though if i dropped a ten pound note on the floor i'd spend time looking for it
35:14wouldn't you not alone yeah i think you're right stick with us after the break we'll be back and
35:19we'll be meeting a couple of detectorists whose passion and determination led them to discover
35:25something life-changing we'll see you in a minute
35:28welcome back to digging for treasure now we've been here for the last couple of days and we found
35:37all sorts of artifacts that help us piece together the history of this area and things like this i
35:43mean doesn't look like much but the color and the thickness of this pottery suggests that these were roman
35:50tiles dating back to almost 2 000 years and it's all these little fun artifacts that that are really
35:59interesting as i say help us piece together the history but sometimes detectorists find something
36:05that leads to a discovery that is extraordinary
36:09i'm richard smiles i've been detecting for 40 odd years and i've known reg probably all of that time
36:2250 47 we did find a rather important treasure hoard which really put jersey on the map
36:30to find one iron age coin on this island might take you all you're detecting life
36:35but to be told there are some scattered that nobody else has bothered to claim
36:40then that was it but the actual location was rather vague and it was the the challenge the quest to find
36:47these coins reg and i persevered and we knew they must be somewhere so in early january 2012 we found
36:56the first coin subsequent searches over the next three to four months we found 65 coins
37:05and then revisited the area in may and found another 60 odd coins
37:11and all of a sudden i've got this very large signal so we began digging down it must have taken us a
37:17good 20 20 minutes or so to get down to a certain depth just twisted the spade and dragged it out he
37:24spots on the end of it five iron age coins and that was the beginning of an amazing story it's a
37:30gilis world record holder now for the largest celtic coin hoard that's ever been discovered huge amount
37:36of jewelry and we've got other objects it's a fascinating assemblage of material
37:44my name is neil mara i'm the museum's conservator with jersey heritage
37:51we all went down there expecting this to be like in and out in one day
37:55so end of day one we'd uncover this really large sort of surface the hoard that had hadn't even
38:00found an edge yet so it was only at that stage we really began to realize that we were onto something
38:06you know very special we had a full team of people here to do this work archaeologists and helpers
38:15we all expected we would find a pot of hundreds of coins maybe a few thousand if we were very lucky
38:21but when we actually came across the top of these coins and you could begin to see these green
38:25encrusted coins being exposed for the first time in over 2 000 years and these just these coins were
38:31just going on and on and on do you want to give them a wash literally just wash the surface surface it's
38:37not going to affect them 69 347 coins was the final total that we came up with which is an incredible
38:46amount of coinage there we are what about that then hey lovely hello neil good to see it again okay
38:56yeah yeah i just said amazing it's a lot cleaner than when we first saw it
39:04it's just uh it's just great to get it all out like this nowhere else in the world
39:07will you get to see that much all together like that from a huge hoard like this just extraordinary
39:16so here we have some of the uh the cleaned up coins there neil they look absolutely stunning
39:20beautiful condition yeah it's really nice to see isn't it i mean and strange to think that
39:24that would be a nice forward by itself there's a hundred coins there but there's another 69 400
39:30back in the store it's gonna take some beating isn't it this is five times bigger than any other celtic
39:37coin hoard found so it's it's been the most amazing thing to work on this one's probably my favorite
39:43because uh talks of this type have been seen before but what we've never seen before are ones where on
39:49on the inside of the wings which would actually be like worn against the throat virtually and pretty
39:53hard to see from the outside you can see they've got these amazing sort of muscle shells and that's
39:58just not not been seen before the way they made these things it's just incredible it's just amazing
40:04a bit of a dream really once in a lifetime unless you guys find the next one of course once in a
40:12lifetime is an understatement i mean what a journey for everybody for the island for us for the
40:16archaeological community it's just been fantastic hasn't it i'm quite humble really yeah we're part of
40:22it many people obsess that it's worth x sort of millions of pounds but to those of us involved in
40:28the research it's worth so much more the really important thing for us is what it can tell us about the
40:33people who actually buried it imagine being involved in that the finder of all finds imagine
40:41that being your land that that was found on we have jeff here with us we're on your land today have
40:46we been well behaved jeff thanks for having us yes you've been very good and what's it been like for
40:49you to have everybody here looking through your land and realizing all these artifacts so much history
40:55beneath your feet jeff well it's absolutely fascinating i mean it's interesting for the detecting
41:00people it's interesting for my wider family me the history the time span because all your family are
41:06interested in history as well and anybody who remembers our first episode of digging for treasure
41:11there was a lancaster bomber which was actually found on your land we talked about that and paul's
41:15the man who found that and you found something else today paul um looking around with mark what's
41:19that you've got in your right hand this is a piece of 50 caliber ammunition from an aircraft
41:24around the world war ii period maybe on jeff's land okay so jeff there might be something else
41:28out there and other aircraft out there well i know very little about this one i think it could
41:31have been a mosquito on a training flight but i don't know where it crashed okay so well we've
41:36got a man here who can probably do a bit more research for you you're gonna have to report back
41:39for us paul okay most definitely yeah i'll report back next year thank you very much i'll take that and
41:44add it to the timeline can we just thank jeff for having us today jeff you're a superstar um helen i'm
41:51going to pop this on the timeline right at the end 1940s yep i mean rapture look at that there's so much
41:56history there how many years have we covered you think in today's program we've almost got 2000
42:00years here this is the the sum of our items that we found uh these didn't quite make the cut but
42:07these are really significant these are items that have been lost or perhaps show a hint of other
42:12buildings and other places around here so we've got everything from roman we've also got non-metal
42:17items that's important so things like the glass i've got those lovely cowbells and everything up to
42:23the 1940s 2000 years is it time to pick our favorites oh god okay i'm going to go for this
42:27one the grinding stone otherwise called a quern stone because i like that i like i like it because
42:33it's big and chunky and obvious and you found it yeah well i'm not actually helen what about you what's
42:38your favorite well i'm going to go for this one which has only just come in it's an early anglo-saxon
42:42wrist clasp so that dates to just after the end of roman britain the fifth and sixth centuries when
42:48when england is just becoming england and they're always worn by women right actually if i can borrow
42:53your arm uh they they hold your shirt cuffs together uh at the wrist um and so this means that an early
43:01anglo-saxon woman was walking around in this field and it fell off her dress or possibly even that she
43:08was buried in the field and the plow has just begun to to hit her her grave because the anglo-saxon
43:14women were buried clothed so that is an extremely exciting thing just from the moment when england
43:20was becoming england your whole face has suddenly come alive yeah raksha what about yours it's got
43:27to be this actually and this you can when you turn it over you can see a hint of a groove and that kind
43:33of suggests that it might belong to a box flue tile which is generally part of the central heating
43:39system of a roman building it's brilliant you've been very excited about that all day haven't you i'm
43:43going to pick something a little bit basic but if you've ever wondered i will be careful with it
43:46um what a 200 year old cow goat or sheep sounded like it's like this hey pretty much what it would
43:53sound like today really no no no but what i love about it is that it still works i mean they wouldn't
43:58make them like that anymore we'll be careful with there you go now guys i think next time we are going
44:02to need our wellingtons because we're going mud larking i know it's a great word isn't it mud larking
44:09on the banks of the river thames and if you've been inspired by anything you've seen in this
44:12program maybe you'd like to become a history hunter loads of information available for you
44:16on our social media just a few people to thank first up our magnificent detectorist thank you so
44:22much guys it's been great to spend the day with you and what about our expert this week dr helen geek
44:28my new favorite geek helen thank you so much for watching i think i got away with that we'll see
44:36you next time
45:17What happened then?
45:28What happened with ViÃn?
45:32What happened nnng?
45:41What happened from ViÃn?
45:45Inspired by anything you've seen in this program, maybe you'd like to become a history hunter.
46:04Loads of information available for you on our social media.
46:07Just a few people to thank.
46:09First up, our magnificent detectorist.
46:11Thank you so much, guys.
46:12It's been great to spend the day with you.
46:14And what about our expert this week, Dr. Helen Geek.
46:18My new favourite geek, Helen.
46:20That's OK, isn't it?
46:23Thank you so much for watching.
46:24I think I got away with that.
46:25We'll see you next time.
46:26Goodbye.
46:27See you next time.
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