... and here is a report of the circumstances surrounding the finding of the coins from
Peter on Moneta-L.
"The
hoard was discovered by metal detectorists Jethro Carpenter and Mark
Gilmour from Redditch on 18 June 2011 on farmland at Bredon
Hill, where they
had often metal detected in the past, with permission of the farmer who
owned the land. After their metal detector indicated a metal object they
found a nail, but they kept digging when the metal detector continued to
register more
metal objects, and they found several sherds of
pottery, and
then some coins, about 50 cm beneath the surface. Once they realised that
there were a large number of coins in the ground they filled in the hole,
and on the 20 June they reported the find to Richard
Henry, the Portable
Antiquities Scheme Finds Liaison Officer for the Worcestershire and
WestMidlands region.
A preliminary survey of the site was carried out by archaeologists on 21
June, and a full excavation of the find site was made at the beginning of
July, for a period of two weeks. The excavation showed that the
hoard hadnot been buried in the open,
as is the case with most
Roman hoards, but
hadbeen deposited in the remains of a villa. The archaeologists uncovered three
distinct layers at the find site. The lowest level contained
stonefoundations for a half-timbered villa, with artefacts and coins dating to
the 2nd through late 3rd centuries. The next level contained postholes for a
wooden building, and included
pottery datable to the 3rd or 4th century, as
well as two coins that dated to the late 3rd century. The top level
comprised rubble with late 4th or early 5th century
pottery. The
hoard was
buried in a hole dug through the top level. A single coin dating to about
355-361 was found in the soil around the
hoard pit, suggesting that the
hoard was buried around the mid 4th century, nearly a hundred years later
than the date of the latest coins in the
pot.
After the coins
had been removed and separated from the soil, they were
dried. Then on 15 July the coins, which weighed 11 kg, were taken to the
British Museum in
London for conservation and
identification."
Alex.
