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Bronze Age hoard discovery 'shock'
A metal-detecting beginner has spoken of his shock at uncovering a hoard of Bronze Age artefacts.
John Minns described finding the collection as "sheer luck" and said he felt he was touching history. Mr Minns uncovered the historic find while on holiday near Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, two years ago.
Among the objects is a Bronze Age razor - the first to be found in the county - which suggests men living in the area between about 1000 and 800BC were clean-shaven. Also found were gold lock rings, believed to have been hair decorations, as well as bracelets, rings, pins and axe heads.
Mr Minns, from Arbroath in Scotland, had only just taken up metal detecting when he went on holiday in April 2005. He was given permission by a local farmer to take the detector on to his land.
"At first I made a couple of small finds, a copper coin and a spindle whorl, just odds and ends," Mr Minns said. "The only reason I found the hoard was that I got a nice signal from the detector, but when I dug away the soil, all I found was a yoghurt pot with a foil lid."
But, keen to follow good metal-detecting practice, Mr Minns re-checked the hole, and to his surprise found half an axe head, followed by another axe. When he spotted the gold rings, Mr Minns sensed immediately that he had stumbled across a major find, and quickly contacted Philippa Walton of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, who arranged to visit him to assess the hoard.
Traditionally, hoards are named after the area in which they were found but to avoid giving away the location of the find until the further excavations had been carried out, Mr Minns suggested naming it after his eight-year-old daughter, and so it became known as the Collette Hoard.
The condition of the objects in the hoard has astounded experts, who believe the find has the potential to provide new and valuable information about the late Bronze Age.
"Hoards from the late Bronze Age containing such a variety of objects in such good condition are very rare in the north of England, so this is an extremely important find," said Lindsay Allason-Jones, director of Archaeological Museums at Newcastle University.
The Collette Hoard will be on display at Newcastle University's Museum of Antiquities from now until the end of June. It is intended that it will go on permanent display from 2009 at the forthcoming Great North Museum.
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