The Find and Excavation

In late December 2021, metal detectorist Peter Heads was scanning a field in Melsonby, North Yorkshire, northern England, with the landowner's permission.

There he made a surprising discovery - a deposit of well-preserved metalwork buried underground.

Realising that the objects appeared to be of archaeological significance, Peter immediately contacted Professor Tom Moore of our Department of Archaeology.

After inspecting the site, Tom realised this was likely to be a ‘treasure case’ and the relevant authorities at the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the British Museum were alerted. Recognising the potential significance of the find, Tom and Peter agreed that a team from Durham University would return in 2022 to conduct an excavation to determine the nature of the discovery.

Historic England was also contacted and agreed to fund the excavation and subsequent analysis and conservation of the artefacts.

The aim of this work was to understand the nature of the discovery and address questions about how and why these finds were deposited where they were.

Excavating the find

Excavations were carried out by a team from Durham’s Department of Archaeology and our professional Archaeological Services team. They were advised by Dr Sophia Adams, curator of First Millennium European and Roman Conquest period Collections, at the British Museum, and received support from Historic England.

Two trenches were opened to uncover what turned out to be two deposits discovered by Peter.

In one trench the archaeological team uncovered a hoard of over 800 fragments of Iron Age metalwork, one of the largest deposits ever found in Britain. The second deposit was a smaller hoard but with a similar range of material. It’s thought the objects had been buried around 2,000 years ago.

Excavation of the main deposit was painstaking work, involving meticulous 3D digital recording of the deposit as it was excavated, which was crucial to understanding the nature of the find.

Preservation of the artefacts

Preservation of the artefacts was a priority and was overseen by Dr Emily Williams, specialist conservator and Associate Professor in our Department of Archaeology.

The complicated and dense nature of the deposit, where some artefacts had stuck fast to one another, meant that the excavation was necessarily slow and careful.

The second deposit had become a concreted, tangled mass of metal objects and soil. However, because of its smaller size, the team was able to remove this as a single large block, for careful excavation in the conservation laboratories in Archaeology at Durham University.

It took the team two months to fully excavate the two trenches and safely recover all the deposited items. It has taken many more months for the block to be carefully examined to reveal the artefacts within.