Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I reviewed the classic Hitchcock film, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Heather reviewed A Ration Book Daughter by Jean Fullerton, set in East London during WWII. Tina enjoyed the fourth book in the Detective Gaby Darin series, set in Wales: Lost Souls by Jenny O’Brien. Jean re-read The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and recommends it for all ages.

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At first thought, a site selling metal detectors seems like an odd place to find engaging information about archaeological sites in Britain. On the other hand, the possibility of finding treasure is the fun of picking up a metal detector, isn’t it?

Sam Jacobs, author of articles at Kellyco Metal Detectors, emailed me after I reviewed The Dig a few months ago. I don’t usually act on invitations to link to other sites, but the articles on the Sutton Hoo Treasure and about other discoveries in Britain are a treat.

Plus, it all reminded me of Detectorists, which I apparently didn’t review but watched a few years ago, and of occasional story lines on The Archers that involve metal-detecting.

In order of the age that these treasures were buried, here are Jacobs’ articles:

• The Hoxne Hoard — These Roman-era artifacts, discovered in Suffolk by an amateur using a metal detector, includes coins dated in the year 407.
• The Sutton Hoo Treasure — The finding of this site was told in the film The Dig. This article provides context about the time when it was buried.
• The Staffordshire Hoard — This was a detectorist discovery in 2009, of roughly the same era as Sutton Hoo, containing even more Anglo-Saxon artifacts. I encountered places to view them during my fantasy trip along the River Trent.
• The Cuerdale Hoard — These are Viking items buried in the early 900s during the Danelaw period. This was also discovered by amateurs, but not with metal detectors — workers found it in the 1840s.

 

Did you know about these archaeological discoveries, treasure buried in the dirt?