Category: Antiquarian
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Anglo-Saxon stone and Roman sarcophagus
Gardener unearths Anglo-Saxon carving in job lot of rockery stone Looking for some natural stone for a rockery in his garden, John Wyatt thought he had found a bargain when he saw a job lot advertised for £50. He was more right than he knew. For when he took the ton and a half of…
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Insular mount from Viking grave
Looted Viking treasure is discovered in British Museum store: Curator spots 1,000-year-old brooch in lump taken from 18th century excavation A Celtic treasure looted by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago has been discovered in the British Museum’s storerooms. An ornate, gilded disc brooch dating from the eighth or ninth century was found by…
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The Witham Shield
Witham Shield, a masterpiece of British Iron Age art, on show in Lincoln Visitors to The Collection in Lincoln will have the chance to view the Witham Shield – a masterpiece of British Iron Age art and an icon of Lincolnshire archaeology – when it returns to the county for the first time in 150…
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The Vyne Roman ring
The Hobbit ring that may have inspired Tolkien put on show In what was once the housekeeper’s office of a Tudor mansion in Hampshire, a very odd golden ring glitters on a revolving stand in a tall perspex column. In chapter five of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins finds a ring in the gloom of Gollum’s…
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The Galloway Picts Project
The Galloway Picts Project Ancient chronicles talk about the Picts of Galloway, a wild fierce people from the Dark Ages. While historians nowadays seem convinced that there were never Picts in Galloway, there is one place in south-west Scotland where apparently incontrovertible evidence for Picts survives. Trusty’s Hill is a vitrified fort, conspicuous amongst the…
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Glastonbury Abbey in the “Dark Ages”
Glastonbury Abbey’s pottery link to Dark Ages Ralegh Radford and Linda Witherill excavated Glastonbury Abbey in 1954 Pottery fragments from an excavation archive of Glastonbury Abbey have shown the site dates back to the Dark Ages, which is later than previously thought. The research project into the 1951-1964 excavation archive have shown humans occupied the…
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London Mesolithic timbers
London’s oldest structure discovered A team from Thames Discovery Programme (TDP) has discovered London’s oldest structure on the foreshore of the Thames just metres from the MI6 building in Vauxhall. As they surveyed the foreshore in spring of 2010, archaeologists from TDP found six timber piles of up to 0.3 metres in diameter. Although no…
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Pillar of Eliseg
Pillar of Eliseg: Archaeologists dig beneath 9th Century monument Archaeologists are to start excavations on a suspected ancient burial site to try to understand the significance of a Llangollen landmark. But the team will have to work carefully because the 9th century Pillar of Eliseg, a CADW-protected ancient monument, stands directly on top of the…
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Viking helmet?
Iron helmet ‘from Battle of Stamford Bridge’ found in Midlands antique shop A rusty iron helmet that may be the only surviving relic of one of the most decisive battles in English history has been found in an antiques shop. A label on the helmet suggests it was fished out of the River Derwent at…
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Mudlarks and shackles
MUDLARKS FIND ‘PRISONER’S SHACKLES’ ON THE MUDDY BANKS OF THE THAMES SHORE The iron shackles, dating from either the seventeenth or eighteenth century, were uncovered about a year ago next to Salt Wharf, by mudlarks Steve Brooker and Rick Jones, who thought they were looking at a more commonly found cannon ball until the chain…
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