Massive Iron Age hoard — one of largest ever — unearthed in the UK. See the finds
In the fields of North Yorkshire, England, a man with a metal detector named Peter Heads scoured the ground in December 2021.
His machine let out a ping, and he found a few metal objects buried in the cold ground.
It wasn’t until later that Heads would realize what he found.
The metal pieces belong to what is now described as “one of the largest and most important Iron Age finds in the (United Kingdom),” according to a March 25 news release from Durham University.
“The Melsonby Hoard was initially discovered by Peter Heads, who is a metal detectorist and he contacted me because I was doing research on Iron Age sites in the region,” Durham University professor Tom Moore said in a March 25 video. “We both realized he had made an interesting and exciting discovery … and then we both agree that we’d come back and do a careful archaeological excavation, but it was only really when we went back to excavate the hoard, and we opened up a much larger area, that I think Peter and I, and all of the team, realized we were on to something really exciting.”
The deposit turned out to be a massive collection of items dating to about 2,000 years ago, according to the university, which has been excavated and studied for the first time.
The hoard includes more than 800 objects ranging, from parts of vehicles like iron tyres and chariot pieces to everyday items like bowls, according to the university.
“A cauldron and a bowl possibly used for wine mixing, elaborate horse harness, bridle bits and ceremonial spears were also found,” the university said. “Some harness pieces are adorned with red, Mediterranean coral and colored glass, and are larger than is typical for that time.”
The majority of the items relate to horses or the vehicles they carried, archaeologists said, but the bowl stands out from the other items.
“The bowl that we discovered is really interesting because it was a very unusual type — not something you’d normally find in northern Britain,” Moore said in the video. “Its decoration combines both Mediterranean and British Iron Age styles. It also has elaborate decoration of coral, so whoever owned something like that has probably got a network across Britain and across into Europe and even the Roman world.”
Archaeologists also noticed that many of the items were intentionally burned or broken, according to the university.
The systematic damage of high-prestige items suggests that people of the time were showing how wealthy and powerful they were by destroying the valuable items, archaeologists said.
A second possibility is their use in a funeral pyre, researchers said, but no human remains were found with the hoard items.
“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,” Moore said in the release.
The entire hoard is technically two deposits: the larger full deposit and a smaller section that could be excavated as a block, researchers said.
When they scanned the block, they saw “very fragile copper alloy tubes” inside that were likely to be damaged if the researchers excavated them from the smaller block, archaeologists said in the video.
Because of the historical significance of the find, archaeologists have been working to stabilize the pieces found in the smaller deposit rather than fully clean and restore them.
“This is one of the most important finds that’s happened in many years, certainly one of the most important Iron Age finds that’s happened,” Keith Emerick, inspector of ancient monuments with Historic England, said in the video. “It tells a great deal about the history of England before England became England. It tells a great deal about our relationship with similar cultures in mainland Europe. But it also helps explain about the complexity, show the complexity of the past.”
The hoard was discovered in Melsonby, near England’s northeastern coast on the North Sea.
This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Massive Iron Age hoard — one of largest ever — unearthed in the UK. See the finds."
