BTW, that's the home turf area there, Shenandoah Valley, Gods Country...
Posted on 08/22/2006 8:17:34 PM PDT by Marius3188
AN Ipswich metal detecting enthusiast has found treasure trove expected to be worth thousands of pounds in a farmer's field.
John McLaughlin, 54, discovered silver gilt brooches, Anglo Saxon dress ornaments, silver studs, rings, knives, a spearhead and amber beads in Mark Partridge's north Ipswich field.
The treasure was from disturbed burial sites from the Sixth and Seventh Century Anglo Saxon and Pagan periods. Mr McLaughlin said the landowner, Mr Partridge gave him permission to metal detect over his land after it was ploughed.
He said he had been finding treasure there for the last three years. “This is my first important find. I have been metal detecting for 10 years and I normally find coins and buckles, so this was a surprise,” he added.
Mr McLaughlin said he reported the delicate items, which had been fragmented by a plough, to John Newman, who is Suffolk County Council's archaeological officer.
Mr Newman said: “These items are linked to some others found in cemeteries around Suffolk and Kent. There were a number of disturbed graves, both male and female and some of high status because of the silver gilt brooches found.
“The iron spearhead is similar to those found in pagan burials. This find gives us an insight into Anglo Saxon life and Ipswich Museum is interested in them.”
Mr Newman explained that treasure such as this was taken to the British Museum and an inquest held to determine if it is precious metal over 300 years old and therefore treasure trove.
At the Ipswich inquest Greater Suffolk Coroner Doctor Peter Dean declared that the find was “undoubtedly treasure trove”.
Mr Newman said the treasure would be valued by experts and it would then be up to Ipswich Museum to raise the funds through grants to buy the items for display. He said Mr McLaughlin and Mr Partridge would each receive half the value.
Mr Newman said: “I would be surprised if it goes over hundreds”.
But Mr McLaughlin said: “I'm expecting it to be thousands based on other finds.” He added: “It just keeps me very interested in metal detecting, you go over the same ground each year and it's very exciting never knowing what you are going to find.”
Lucky guy
Don't all treasure troves belong to the crown by some feudal right?
Imagine the value if it hadn't be chopped up by the plow.
They should have to let ebay set the value of the items! The way it is the real owners will not get crap for them.
Oh, he made his own luck. I'm jealous though...
Actually, I believe most of the 'finders' have been satisfied with what they've received. I seems like a good system that encourages the 'finders' to step forward and keeps these items off the black market.
There would be no need for a 'black market' if the official market was fair and undistorted by government action.
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Granted, in the instances where spectacular finds are made that I've seen have the government paying handsome sums for it, I'm still opposed to it in general. Finders keepers AFAIC, to the extent agreed upon by the detectorist and landowners. It's not like the stuff would ever be found if it weren't for the hobbyists, and most responsible detectorists will always offer the Archie pukes a look see and the location (after it's POUNDED! :-))
I have a gripe with this here (US) on a state basis, because states like Virginia have passed restrictive legislation on the hobby which will either leave relics to rot in the ground, or have them paved over by shopping centers with the artifact containing dirt often hauled off. That, and a couple of anecdotal retellings of meetings with archaeologists who abhor detecting but who have impressive collections and exclaim that it's one of the "perks of the business"...
The guy who runs the metal detecting forum I frequent found a winged Roman phallus pendant on his last trip to England and was allowed to keep it. It was quite interesting.
My latest nifties are:
1917-S Type I Standing Liberty Quarter Half
1901 $20 gold (I "eyeballed" that one)
Other stuff derived from site where Quarter was found (Cool good luck token in particular)
Dude, governments have warehouses of this stuff collecting dust to the rafters. Like fossil hunting, always being eroded for individuals, but man, the Smithsonian is getting Soooo much mileage out of the dozens of triceratops skulls in basement storage... (And any arguement for their being in "one place for research" is kinda moot now since they can be MRI'd and CT'd to database.)
Thanks for the info. I have found some interesting stuff over the years, but Britain certainly has some gems, thanks to the Romans.
It belongs to the nation (as it should because of its historical importance) but the law says that the finder is entitled to get paid its monetary worth.
Mr Newman said the treasure would be valued by experts and it would then be up to Ipswich Museum to raise the funds through grants to buy the items for display. He said Mr McLaughlin and Mr Partridge would each receive half the value.
ping
I live in Virginia. A local talk show host talked about this a few years back. It seems as though folks were raiding Civil War battlefields, digging away as they saw fit.
One of these days I'd like to try metal detecting. I saw a show on television about this place in Florida.
The program stated that folks find gold coins fairly frequently.
Oh yea, (I came from Northern VA, and went to school at JMU). Some of my buddies who worked at some of the sites said back in the late 70's and early 80's there were areas where they took a little backpack mounted machine that fired aluminum disks in the ground and worked it through some areas to try to halt that.
The battlefields themselves are generally preserved in National Parks that are off limits. the downside, even there, is that the majority of the artifacts associated with the CW are iron and are rapidly decaying. Outside of the parks, the areas of movement and contest are being paved over at rates orders of magnitude over what any archaeological groups could ever hope to spend time on.
In the instance of parks even, they should let the detectorists in, but issue them a GPS unit and a log sheet and require them to locate, tag and log their finds along with a digital photo. Possibly even section fields and have them stick one of those little metal post flags in it.
They could lottery the opportunities, or even sell access. Detectorists would get to have a field day and researchers would get intimate information on shot and bullet density and patterns revealing position and intensity of the battle. IIRC, they did this on a Revolutionary War field further north a few years back and had it on Discovery or the History channel.
The site where I found the SLQ was in Benicia, CA (the state capitol for a brief time and a large military area). It was being turned into something like Bocce courts. My friend noted it on a recon trip and we hit it hard right after it was scraped. He found, among other things, an 1837 Seated Liberty half dime and an 1875 Seated Liberty dime. All of my finds were entered into my log with date and location (I'm pretty sure he does this too) and we both posted them to our forum.
A group of forum members were just recently able to hit a park site being astroturfed in SF (right across the street from where I first lived out here) over a week and a half and the finds were astounding. Something like 3000 coins and tokens dating to the 1840's. interesting tidbits of the past like lockets and a 1915 Panama Pacific expo watch fob. They're hoping to be able to comb the removed dirt now (before it's landfilled) and the turfed area is now covered for all intents and purposes forever.
A shame the items were broken into pieces by the plough.
From bronze age times, if you lost one item per year, or even every 5 years, in a given area, you have a COOL detecting spot in 2006 :-)
BTW, that's the home turf area there, Shenandoah Valley, Gods Country...
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