The Yorkshire Museum launched a fundraising campaign to secure the Melsonby Hoard, one of the most important Iron Age discoveries ever made in the UK. Valued at £254,000, the hoard includes over 800 items buried around 2,000 years ago, providing unprecedented insights into northern Iron Age society, technology, wealth, power, and travel, according to the Yorkshire Post.
"This Iron Age hoard is an unprecedented find in the north, which will help us to understand more about this remarkable period in our history," said Andrew Woods, senior curator at the Yorkshire Museum, according to BBC News. "We have the exciting opportunity to save the hoard for the nation and the people of Yorkshire," he added.
A selection of items from the Melsonby Hoard will be on display at the Yorkshire Museum in Museum Gardens starting Tuesday, March 25, 2025, according to Yahoo News.
The discovery was made in December 2021 by metal detectorist Peter Heads, who had permission from the landowner to search the field near Melsonby, North Yorkshire, and immediately reported his find to the proper authorities. Recognizing the importance of the find, Professor Tom Moore, head of the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, was alerted due to his research in the area.
The excavation of the hoard received a £120,000 grant from Historic England, and excavations took place in 2022, including the removal of one large block of tangled metal objects that may have been in a bag together. The dig was led by Professor Tom Moore, and the site was fully excavated by archaeologists from Durham University with support from the British Museum, as reported by the Yorkshire Post. The objects are now at Durham University for stabilization, recording, and conservation, spread out in a climate-controlled room on long tables.
The Melsonby Hoard includes more than 800 items, including the partial remains of at least seven four-wheeled wagons or two-wheeled chariots, ceremonial spears, and elaborate harnesses for ponies. Among the items are 28 iron tyres, which were fitted to the outside of wooden wheels and had been intentionally bent out of shape. Some harnesses were adorned with red Mediterranean coral and coloured glass, creating a shiny, impressive spectacle.
Many of the items had been purposefully burnt or broken before being buried, indicating a deliberate act by their owners to demonstrate wealth and power, possibly as offerings at the funeral of an elite individual. No human remains were found with the hoard. One of the cauldrons, which was lidded and likely used as a wine mixing bowl, was found carefully placed upside down at the bottom of a large ditch, as reported by Chronicle Live.
Experts involved in the find, described as internationally important, say the objects may lead to a reassessment of how we understand wealth, status, trade, and travel among Britain's Iron Age tribes. "This is the largest single deposit of horse harness and vehicle parts excavated in Britain," said Dr. Sophia Adams, an expert on the era at the British Museum. "It is significant not just for the quantity of objects buried together 2,000 years ago but also the quality and range of items," she added, according to the Yorkshire Post.
"Quite simply, this is one of the most important and exciting Iron Age period discoveries made in the UK," said Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England. "It sheds new light on Iron Age life in the north and Britain, but it also demonstrates connections with Europe," He noted.
The hoard is almost certainly associated with the Brigantes tribe, who controlled a large part of what is now Yorkshire and most of northern England during the Roman invasion, according to The Guardian. Melsonby is around a mile from Stanwick, the power base of the Brigantes tribe when the Romans arrived in 43 CE.
"Whoever originally owned the material in this hoard was probably a part of a network of elites across Britain, into Europe and even the Roman world," said Professor Tom Moore. "For some of the objects, the best parallels are found in continental Europe, indicating long-distance connections and shared technology at the time," he added.
"The destruction of so many high-status objects, evident in this hoard, is also of a scale rarely seen in Iron Age Britain and demonstrates that the elites of northern Britain were just as powerful as their southern counterparts," stated Moore.
"We're going to have to spend years thinking what did these vehicles look like, where did they come from?" he noted.
The hoard includes vehicle components for which it is hard to find parallels in Britain, suggesting that technology was shared by people living great distances from one another.
"The scale of the find and the material in it is completely unparalleled in this country," said Keith Emerick, an inspector of ancient monuments at Historic England, according to The Guardian. He described the discovery as a "once-in-a-lifetime find for everyone involved."
The objects were identified using scanning technology at the University of Southampton, which allowed the archaeologists to excavate the objects without causing damage, as reported by BBC News. One ditch associated with the hoard was carefully examined on site, and another was extracted as a whole and was X-rayed using a large scanner at Southampton University.
The exact location of the Melsonby Hoard discovery is not being revealed over concern that rogue treasure hunters will turn up at night and start looking for other artefacts.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
