Amateur treasure hunters, from detectorists to mudlarkers, are uncovering remarkable historical artefacts across Britain, with the British Museum spotlighting their latest finds.
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00:00It's tempting to think that we've found everything, and we've found so much in a way that you
00:29can see why people think that maybe there isn't very much left to find. But there is
00:34an amazing amount of stuff that seems to be left. Things are being found all the time.
00:41Here we have a silver coin of the East Anglian king Athelstan II, who was also the Viking
00:54ruler Guthrum. He adopted Christianity and was baptised as Athelstan. This is the first
01:03silver coin minted by a Scandinavian ruler in Britain in the late 800s. Ordinarily a
01:15single silver coin wouldn't be treasure, and so anyone who found something like this would
01:20be able to sell it or keep it themselves. But because of the significance of this coin,
01:28and what it tells us about this particular moment in history, it's been declared treasure.
01:32So what I have in front of me is a middle Bronze Age hoard, about 3,300 years old,
01:47of bronze objects. And we get quite a few of these through found by metal detectorists. But
01:53what makes this hoard exceptional and special is that it contains a small anvil for working
01:59precious metal. And that's the earliest and first metal anvil found in Britain.
02:05So it's a really important new discovery.