Bronze Age Gold from Wales
Middle Bronze Age gold bar torc
This is a complete and slender flange-twisted torc or neck-ring made from a solid gold bar. It has been tightly coiled seven and half times, so that it would fit inside a pottery vessel with other associated objects, when it was buried. At each end is a round-sectioned hooked terminal that has been welded onto the flanged bar; these terminals are undecorated and conical, expanding to the ends.
Twisted gold bar torc, 1300-1150 BCE. Wales was at the heart of a tradition of gold-working in Atlantic Europe during the Middle Bronze Age. This coiled torc was among objects found in a pottery vessel at Burton near the River Alun. It was tightly coiled so that it would fit inside the vessel.
Project Title: Gold in Britain’s auriferous regions, 2450-800 BC: towards a coherent Research Framework and Strategy. Status: Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Network Grant funded project (2018-2019)
WA_SC 18.1
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Site Name: Burton, Wrexham
Notes: Hoard. A hoard of fourteen gold, bronze and ceramic objects were found while metal-detecting in January 2004 in a recently ploughed field in the flood plain of the River Alun at Burton, near Wrexham. Thirteen of these objects were found within a 1.5-2m square area, while a fourteenth was found 24m away. All objects were found 5-20cm below the ground. Subsequently a small archaeological test pit was excavated, which clarified the location of some of the objects. It is possible the objects were deposited within a small ceramic vessel, though only a sherd of this still survives. Two further gold objects were found while metal-detecting in August 2007 a few metres from the hoard findspot and were deemed to also be part of this hoard.
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