Bronze Age Gold from Wales

A Middle Bronze Age hoard (1400-1275 BCE) comprising a minimum of six gold and bronze items of jewellery, a bronze palstave and a bronze dagger. The items of jewellery include a decorated gold bracelet fragment, two decorated bronze bracelets, at least two twisted bronze torcs or neck-rings and a bronze pin.

During 2013 and 2014 a series of finds were made, while metal-detecting in a field under pasture. The artefacts make up a hoard that was disturbed and scattered by modern ploughing. An archaeological investigation of the find-spot was undertaken by museum archaeologists, helping to identify accurate find-spots for the objects and locating the hoard in the landscape.

This hoard illustrates the wide range of bronze and gold jewellery forms of the early part of the Middle Bronze Age, sometimes termed the ‘Ornament Horizon’ in Britain. Similar finds are rare in Wales, but close parallels are found in hoards from Somerset and Sussex. The bronze torcs are early examples of a twisted metalworking tradition, later developed into the flange-twisted gold torc tradition across Britain and Atlantic Europe.

The hoard was declared treasure in 2015 and later acquired for the national collection.