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Man Finds Roman Gold Coin Hoard Worth £100,000 With Metal Detector
An anonymous reader writes "A novice metal detector has found one of the largest roman gold coin hoards ever unearthed in the UK. From the article: 'National newspapers reported on Wednesday that the man, from Berkhamsted, had been sold a beginner’s metal detector from the town’s High Street-based Hidden History for £135. He is reported to have gone back with 40 of the “solidi” coins, dating to the last days of Roman rule in Britain, and asked: “What do I do with this?”'"
What else are you supposed to do with money? Of course, they may not be selling spears, shields and trebuches any longer.....
Man unearths 2000 year old bit-coin with metal-detector
An anonymous reader writes
"A novice metal detector has found one of the largest bit coin servers ever unearthed in the UK. From the article: 'National newspapers reported on Wednesday that the man, from Berkhamsted, had been sold a beginner’s metal detector from the town’s High Street-based Hidden History for £135. He is reported to have gone back with 40 of the bit coins, dating to the last days of 'Cameron' rule in Britain, and asked: “What do I do with this?”'"
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rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
as long as he has the landowners permission he can dig ,
he cannot sell them though
if it goes as treasure trove then him and the landowner get to share the value
who where what when now?
The search was on private land. So they person that owns the land owns the stuff. Normally a farmer give permission for you to piss about in their land with a detector and if you find anything they'll give a 50/50 split.
http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba114/feat2.shtml
The Property Act 1925, and subsequent judicial rulings, state that a person owns everything which is in their land. This has been understood to mean, as Lord Renfrew put it when writing about an iron age hoard (in Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership, Duckworth 2000), that "the original owner of the land where the finds were made [is...] their rightful owner". This assumption is correct – so long as the artefacts were not removed from the land by a person authorised to do so.
So basically, not finding items of historical value is better than finding them and destroying a bit of historically valuable surroundings?
Yes, in most cases.
Isn't the worth of historically relevant findings in the knowledge they provide rather than their existence?
No, because in archaeology, the context of a find is everything. Of course, valuable and beautiful objects make for
great exhibitions, but context is really the main part of what is interesting. You'll see an archaologist become much
more excited over an unusual and unexpected piece of wood than over "another roman gold coin. meh."
We have tens of thousands of roman gold coins already, and I doubt any of the coins this guy found are of
an unkown kind.
However, an amateur will not know to care for some fibres around the gold coins that may have been a
uniquely crafted bag, thereby proving trade contacts with $faraway_place. Of will discard a couple of shovels
full of dirt with bone fragments or plant seeds in them which would make this a unique and invaluable find.
If you find something, don't touch it and report it, but don't dig around yourself - you'll do way more
harm than good, and may even commit a crime.
in Italy, if you find something on your own land, the owner of archaeological stuff is Italy, moreover the country can temporarily occupy the piece of land interested and the owner is entitled to indemnification.
This is why in Italy people does not find historical stuff on the owned lands...
as long as he has the landowners permission he can dig
With the obvious exception of land which covers scheduled monuments or Archaeological Priority Areas, where permission form English Heritage is needed (and rarely granted to individuals with metal detectors)
Yes. They will still be there for a proper archaeologist to discover at some future time. Given how many artifacts were damaged or ruined by bungling explorers in the 1800's and early 1900's, I'd say it is prudent to leave the task to experts.
Amusingly many of those bungling explorers were the "experts" of the time. Also in order for archeologists to know there's anything worth digging up, someone has to make a chance discovery. Proper archeology takes a lot of time and resources, and thus sites are only excavated if there's reason to suspect there's something to look for in the first place.