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Middle Bronze Age gold wire
This is a slender piece of gold wire with shaped ends, or terminals. Repeated curves, or meanders in the wire suggest it was once coiled, but has since been partly stretched out of its earlier shape. At one end, there is a small round shaped head and at the other, the wire has been flattened and bent back to create a hook. When discovered, the hook end was located within a gold biconical shaped bead. The wire may therefore have been used, in some way, to help suspend the bead.
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Find Information
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 (2009.37H/1-2) were found while metal-detecting in August 2007 a few metres from the hoard findspot about 60cm below the surface and were deemed to also be part of this hoard.