Past Talks
Archaeology, Artifacts and a Career in Ruins
Date: 17th April 2023
Speaker: Anni Byard
Archaeology, Artifacts and a Career in Ruins - being an account of the talk delivered by Anni Byard to the members and guests of the Bicester Local History Society at the Clifton Centre on Monday 17th of April 2023.
Anni Byard, an archaeologist for more than twenty years, introduced her talk with the observation that it had originally been scheduled for July 2022, but that it had to be postponed because of the 40° heat wave that Bicester, and the rest of the country, was being subjected to at that time. There were about 30 members and guests present for a very informative and entertaining evening. Most of the words that follow are Anni Byard’s.
I studied archaeology, mostly Egyptology and the Ancient Near East at the University of Liverpool, and my dissertation there was on the development of writing, those little round tokens, in about 8,000 B.C. You will see that there is a recurrent theme in my talk of little round things. My affection for little round things began in Liverpool. But when I finished my degree, I began working in commercial archaeology. Commercial archaeologists are called in whenever a large building project is being planned to record the archaeology of the site before the building work starts.
After this I became finds liaison officer at the Portable Antiquities Scheme and I covered Oxfordshire and West Berkshire, and West Berkshire got chopped off, I did just Oxfordshire for about two or three years. While I was there, I did a part time masters continuing education Oxford to look at landscape archaeology and in that I looked specifically what is called plough zone archaeology. With the Portable Antiquities Scheme, they work mostly with metal detector users, and they find lots of little round things as well, in the plough zone, which really refers to the artefacts that are found in that top 12 inches of soil on ploughed field for example. I left the Portable Antiquities Scheme in 2019, tried to, I keep getting sort of dragged back to do this bits and pieces because I was offered a fully funded PhD with the University of Leicester and the Ashmolean Museum, looking at little round things, which I'll tell you about right at the end, and so did that part time now. I started in 2019 and of course in 2020 lockdown happened I was full time for the first year, but basically couldn't do much work because, as we all know, everything was shut: no universities open, no museums, no libraries, no nothing. So I am a year behind, I am now part time with the PhD and two days a week I now work for Oxford Archaeology on Osney Mead as their small finds specialist, little round things again, and I also do other things like finds training, I give lectures at university local history groups, obviously, community archaeology projects, I do some freelance work, I write for the magazines, and all that sort of thing, so quite varied.
It all really started after degree in commercial archaeology and from studying Egyptology in the Ancient Near East, which is nice and warm going to, this is very topical, this is the…, I did attempt to learn how to say Brecon Beacons in Welsh but gave up[1]. There was 120-kilometre pipeline that went from Tirley and Gloucestershire through to Brecon, or whatever it is called now, and I was out there probably on and off for about 18 months. This is a high-pressure gas pipeline, and so we did the archaeology all along this 120-kilometre route, but, as you can see, British archaeology is not quite as glamorous as Egyptology or being in Jordan, and these are all the same sites over one year, so snow, floods, sheep, that is actually a Roman road in the middle there, that nobody knew existed, so that was quite a nice discovery.
Moving on to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which was set up in that 1997 when the new Treasure Act[2] came in which replaced the old Law of Treasure Trove. I am not really going to mention treasure tonight, that is a whole talk on its own really. It is a voluntary scheme set up by the British Museum for the recording of archaeological artefacts found by members of the public; mostly metal detector users, but also if you found something in your garden, or allotment, or you out walking the dog along the field and you see an artefact and then you can take it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. My successor Ed is based at Witney or Standlake. You can take your artefact to him; he will identify it, record it, and put it onto the national database, and then give it back, so all that information is available on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website. There is a lot for Oxfordshire, which we will come onto in a second. The Portable Antiquities Scheme was set up and run by the British Museum, funded by the Department for Culture Media and Sport, and the host organisation, Oxfordshire County Council, for instance. They have a network of finds liaison officers across England and Wales. Scotland has different rules regarding metal detecting and finding archaeological objects, so the Portable Antiquities Scheme only covers England and Wales. Northern Ireland has different rules as well. The Portable Antiquities Scheme also administer the legal obligations of the Treasure Act, like I said, I will not go into this, but in the image on the screen you might recognise some of these artefacts.
This is part of the huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver, the Staffordshire Hoard, found in about 2010 something like that maybe slightly later[3], but this is what qualified as treasure, basically because it is shiny, it is gold and silver, so it qualifies as treasure, that means that the Crown owns it, and the finder is then paid a reward, to be split with landowner, so a museum can acquire it. In this case it was valued at just over £3.285 million, not bad for an afternoon's work! Most of the finds were on top of the ground over the pasture field, and they had been ploughed up, the grass had grown up and yet most of these things were on the surface, quite amazing, Anglo-Saxon gold, an incredibly important discovery.
It is a very varied role, a fascinating role, and the main remit is to identify and record archaeological artefacts found by members of the public. We go from the earliest history human history to pre-modern human history, so from about 500,000 B.C. all the way up to 1800. The little hand axe on the bottom left, that was from Abingdon and dates to somewhere, quite wide date range, 375,000 about 450,000 B.C. is one of the oldest objects that is recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website. For example, if a detectorist finds a hoard in the ground, then we ask them to stop digging. Do not just dig it out yourself. Archaeologists will go in and excavate that hoard, or whatever, to make sure it is recorded properly. I still do that a lot for Portable Antiquities Scheme because a lot of the area liaison officers are artefact specialists, they are not field archaeologists, whereas I am a field archaeologist as well, so I get to go out and dig some things up, and it happens quite a lot. The very first slide I should have mentioned the coin hoard that was scattered, that was from Stoke Lyne. The chap who found it phoned me up, we went out and, coin hoard, brilliant, you can see where the coins have been dragged by the plough. I think there were about 1,000 coins in that little area. I got home, I live in Wantage, and the phone rang, and he found another horde, six feet away from the first, so the next day we went back to Stoke Lyne and we dug up another hoard. There is something about 2,000 coins I think; and then last year I got called out to Stoke Lyne again, different field. The first two hoards were late Roman, 3rd and 4th century, the hoard that I excavated last year is the 2nd century, silver denarii. Most of these fortunately have ended up at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, so please do go and have a look if you get the chance.
Outreach is a huge part of the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s work and is looking at those images there, so we've got the really old hand axe on the bottom left, on the bottom right is a late Bronze Age of about 1,200 B.C. spear head and then right up the modern era, this railway badge that is from Burford from about 1850, and it is from the Edinburgh and Glasgow police, so what it was doing down near Burford? Absolutely no idea, interesting.
So, there are about somewhere in the region of 45,000 objects found by the public, so this doesn't include archaeological digs, be that community or commercial archaeology. This is just things found by people like you, about 45,000, but it is going up day, by day, by day, and by far the most popular thing to record are little round things – coins. About 20,000 coins now from Iron Age right through to about 1700. We tend not to record sort of more modern coins because they are so common. Really it covers many things like brooches, belt buckles, tokens, which are another little round thing, bits of vessels, metal strap fittings, finger-rings, everything you can think of has been recorded pretty much in Oxfordshire. You can see that on the distribution map, Wantage, for about 10 years it was the favoured place for huge metal detecting rallies. This was because you are on the Downs with lots of open land there, and these rallies used in attract 1,000 to 1,500 people, that is about 10 years’ worth, which is why there is that big concentration around Wantage. If you go out to Witney to the left concentration there that is around Burford and Milton-under-Wychwood area and about five years running the big rallies there as well, so that's what those big concentrations reflect. These are commercial affairs, you pay for your ticket, you camp, there are bars, music, there are stalls, a mini festival in fact. At the beginning of the month, at Watlington as well, where we recorded nearly 400 objects in two days.
You see huge variety of artefacts, basically anything you can think of, I have seen and recorded. When I was at the Portable Antiquities Scheme that I personally recorded about 18,000 finds over the 12 years I worked for them. Top left is an Iron Age coin of Tasciovanus[4] so that is about 20 B.C. to A.D. 10, Iron Age horse fittings, late mediaeval, early post mediaeval silver coins, gold finger-rings just absolutely anything and everything in between. More little round things, always good, so we go from I mean that sort of covers the entire breadth of coin production in Britain so on the left is an Iron Age silver coin unit. We do not actually know what the Iron Age coins were called, the silver unit is from the Dobunni region or tribe which covers the Gloucestershire area. We did get some from Bicester. In the middle is an Anglo-Saxon coin called a sceat[5] that is about the 7th century and on the right-hand side the top is a trade token, one my favourite objects. They date to the mid to late 17th century and they are advertising tokens. Basically there are those minted or structure for Bicester people so you could be merchant and nurture have a pub trade tokens a wonderful little items easy said the person’s name and their occupation on the trade token. More unusual objects: on the bottom left there is a stamp, and you can see the writing on it but we cannot quite work out what it says but we think it is a Roman cheese stamp. Somebody would have made his roll of cheese and the merchant and put his stamp on it. It is not a pottery stamp; they are very different. That is from Culham, near Abingdon, and then on the right is an incredibly rare artefact, it was found like this, in the bottom of a box of watch bits allegedly bought at a Berinsfield car boot sale, several years ago now. It is very thin sheet gold and is the covering of the scabbard of a Bronze Age sword. There are only about five or six in the country. He found it in the bottom of the box of car boot bits. That never happens to me.
But all the shiny stuff, this is what most of it looks like. Most these are Roman coins or ‘grots’, as they are affectionately called, because they are really grotty. Most of the stuff is not shining, and ground-breaking, and rewriting history. It is just run-of-the-mill stuff and of course things have been in the ground for hundreds of years, centuries like these happen thousands of years even about ploughing around especially with modern agriculture all the pesticides and things that are sprayed on the ground it does start to degrade the object. But recording these grotty little things is actually really important. This is West Hanney, just north of Wantage, where some of these big rallies happened, there were two years we had huge rallies. There are three little diamonds, this is in 2009, that would be known archaeology, or find spots, of that parish. After the metal detecting rallies, those are the find spots, and it literally transformed the history of the village overnight, just by recording stuff that has been found in the plough soil. There were a few nice finds, I think I put one of them in here a bit later on, but this is what my Masters research is focused on, in fact this village and how it characterised changing land use by looking at what being found and where, and breaking up simply just in the period Bronze Age, or Roman, whatever. Even the really grotty coins are worth recording, because literally you can rewrite history.
What is your favourite find? Having recorded 18,000 odd finds, just for the Portable Antiquities Scheme and probably up to about 7,000 or 8,000 for Oxford Archaeology, it is almost impossible. It is very hard to choose just one find and these are some beautiful examples of things I have seen over the years: Roman brooches, gold Iron Age coins, mediaeval clasps, papal bulla, Roman figurines, Bronze Age swords, there is so much to choose from.
But I have got to choose. People want to know what my favourite find is. This is probably my favourite. This is Old Blue Eyes[6], he is lovely. I go to Banbury Museum once a month, and people would bring their artefacts in. One day a chap turned up with a backpack, put it on the table – “oh, it is going to be to rocks again.” Anyway, he took this out of his bag, and nearly fell out of my chair. It was found in 1970; he was ploughed up by this gentleman just outside Brackley, so technically just into Northamptonshire, but we are claiming it anyway. He was rediscovered in the Banbury Museum in 2009. It is Marcus Aurelius[7], the Roman Emperor. If you have seen the film “Gladiator”, the old bloke at the beginning who gets murdered, that is Marcus Aurelius[8] so a very famous emperor. Anyway, he we must persuade the finder to sell him to the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum wanted him, but he remained locally. There is a little story attached to this. He had a friend of a friend who was a local history expert and antiques dealer come and look at Marcus, and said that it was a Grand Tour copy, and offered £50 for it. He went if it is only £50, then I will keep it and had it on the mantel piece. His wife got fed up with polishing it, so it went under the stairs for 20 years. Anyway, the Ashmolean Museum bought it for £60,000. Sensible not sell him for £50. He is on display in the Rome Gallery in the Ashmolean if you want to go and see him[9]. He is wonderful and has appeared everywhere. There is a series of books about finds to support the Portable Antiquities Scheme and Marcus appears on the Roman finds book. The picture in the middle is from a flyer from the Ashmolean Museum, and on the right television series, now a good decade ago “Britain Secret Treasures”[10] and features on the front page of that. What I love about this is in “Britain’s Secret Treasures”, Brian Blessed got his beard twiddled in the same way as Marcus Aurelius, which I just think was fantastic. I missed the episode, and I cannot find anywhere.
Going back to West Hanney, we stop for those dots on the map and 2009 a detectorist out on one of these big rallies dug up this broach on the right-hand side does not look much really at the moment as he dug down, he saw what he thought might be a jaw; so, he stopped digging. We went out to investigate and over the next few days we uncovered this burial of a woman probably in her mid-20s, an Anglo-Saxon, 7th century. She has got on the outside of her legs a couple of handmade pots, there couple of knives, a spindle whorl in between her knees, also a cup of Roman glass. That is all pretty typical, to be honest for a 7th century female burial, but then you get this broach. Unfortunately incomplete, after conservation and cleaning, it looked like this, and it is a very rare 7th century Kentish composite disc broach. They are usually found, as the name suggests, down in Kent, but there is an interesting little collection in Oxfordshire. There are twenty known to exist in the country, worldwide, we have got one from Hanney, there is one from Milton near Didcot, is one from Abingdon and then a few years later, this in bits came up, and this is from Bicester. This is an attempted digital reconstruction, it was found opposite as you can see, completely trashed but with other quite nice artefacts as well. What is amazing about these is the quality of the gold work. This is a period when they did not really have coinage, coinage was just starting to sort of trickle in a bit. They also stopped using the fast wheel for pottery, pottery was on the slow wheel, but yet you get incredibly high-quality gold working. The white you can see on the Bicester broach is coral from the Red Sea and garnets, probably from Italy. This is a European wide network of trade and goods. Why we have this little concentration in Kent, but then this little group in Oxfordshire is really interesting. We think it is probably something to do with the ruling classes, or the Gewisse, a tribe of this area during the 7th century. But they must have obviously had connexions to Kent. Really interesting again, you can look all these finds up on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website.
The Merton Axe Hoard[11] is actually a really important discovery, again it was out on one of these metal detecting digs only a small dig only about 50 or 60 people there, but it was on the 23rd of December couple years ago now. It was cold, wet, dark as well I thought we got away with it. but at 2:00 o'clock the phone rang. I was actually on site anyway recording finds the phone rang and said “Anni, we have got a hoard!” Like no, not now, not now! Could not get hold of anyone, could not even get hold the farmer. Sometimes you know the problem with these sorts of discoveries is you have to secure the site. if you do not secure the site, finds can go walkabout. Fortunately, it has not happened yet, but we had to secure the site – but it is two days before Christmas. There was no chance. I could not get hold of any friend, any archaeologists, we could not get hold of the farmer, so I had to very hastily block lift it – which is to dig it out basically as a whole and hope that it stays intact. It stayed in my kitchen over Christmas, in the way. How many people have Bronze Age axe hoard next to their microwave? After Christmas, when people got back from the holidays, we drove it down to the British Museum, where they did some excavation so they as you can see, going down layer, by layer, by layer. There is no way I would have been able to do this, in the field, in two hours, before it was dark, so this is why I block lifted it. That is just a black bin liner, somebody was an electrician. He had some electrical tape in his car, so you wrap it. Fortunately, it is clay so to the matrix is quite solid, and just wrap It, and wrap it, and wrap it, and just hope it does not fall apart when lifted up, which it did not and it had to go into a sheep bucket, because we had nothing else to put it in. Pretty haphazard to be honest, not how it should be done in all honesty, but there is no way I could leave that for two weeks it simply would not have been there when we got back. Bronze Age axe hordes are incredibly rare in Oxfordshire, in fact, pretty much this is the only one. There are 13 axes in all. It is the biggest one, I think there is another of five from somewhere; so, it is a really important discovery. We do not get Bronze Age axe hordes in Oxfordshire, whereas in places like Sussex there really common. But what is interesting with these axes is that some of them had been used somewhere, some were pretty much brand new. You can just make out on the bottom right of the X-ray that one can see it's quite holy. That is poor casting, the metal is not very good quality. The British Museum had a specialist come in and look at these. He was and a metal worker and he said that the Bronze Age metal worker would have known that the quality of the metal was poor by ringing it. Once he had cast the axe, he would tap it and make it ring so thinking maybe that is why they were buried, because eventually they were going to be recycled, but for whatever reason they never were. Again, this is going to the Oxfordshire Museum as well because this qualifies as treasure and also the stress of you know it is going to be dark in two hours, and managing to get it all done. It is really great. You have not got much room, but there is always a crowd of spectators watching, and there is always bloke detecting close to you hoping that they can find the other bit of the hoard. They help out as well, and then to lift the hoard because that was over 30 kilos, I am pretty strong, but not on my own, so we managed to get it out. It is a really good discovery.
The Rollright Burial up at the Rollright Stones, which you may have seen it in the newspapers. Again, metal detectorists found a long-handled pan bring up top left along handle pan again it was over Easter. Everybody finds stuff when everyone else goes on holiday all my colleagues are on holiday. Fortunately, the farmer was able to put incredibly huge block of concrete over the top of it because it is very close to the King Stone, which the public can access. It had already drawn quite a lot of attention, and some unwanted attention as well, so the police were called also to keep an eye on it. Fortunately, a week later we went back, and it was still there, and excavated it. I found about 36 or so artefacts, so the long-handled pan is really important. At the top left is a lock plate so there was a box in there. Obviously, the boxes rotted and gone, but we found a little box fitting and the hinges. You can see down there is a single amber bead in the middle, on the bottom, on the right of the bone or antler disc which has got really fine perforations around the outside. It was found beneath the spine so it may well have possibly been attached to her hair. On the right is at very large raw crystal spindle whorl. Now the rock crystal and the single amber bead would have had magical properties. But the pan is really interesting, again about fifth known in the country, it was placed in the box to the left of her head, again a woman in her late 20s. We think that these pans we used for baptism ceremonies. The 7th century is called the conversion period which is when Christianity start getting a hold across what will become England, and the woman also had basically repetitive strain injury in her arm, which could have been from weaving maybe using a loom or spinning wheel, but it was also suggested maybe she did a lot of baptisms, but with the other artefacts and where she was buried, overlooking Compton, it does suggest that she was that she was somebody very high status and very important, and potentially a Christian missionary. An interesting and important burial and again this has gone to the Ashmolean.
Minerva[12], and “I can't believe it's not butter”. I came back from holiday, and this was sat on my table in the margarine tub. It was found several years ago just outside Witney, and you can see the size of it to my hand there. She was in a few bits when it was discovered several years ago the finder, detectorist, said it was just a Grand Tour copy and just gave us the landowner and it sat in the drawer for years. Then the landowner’s nephew ‘rediscovered’ it. It is a Roman statue of the goddess Minerva, and it hit the papers. It was on the right-hand side there in that photograph for the British Museum treasure launch and we have the minister and Paul Booth from Oxford Archaeology there with the Minerva, again an incredibly rare find about this but the newspapers loved the fact that it was found in the margarine tub. Well, I found out that that about the time that this was found there was a margarine called Minerva, and it would have just been brilliant if that had been the brand of margarine, but it was not.
So, probably my favourite find, this is pretty much it, I think. This is actually from Wiltshire and is a Mediaeval Seal Matrix. You get some wax and impress their matrix. It is basically a signature. The seal is huge, when complete it probably would have been about the size of a mug base, so it really big. Mostly all matrices are small. As you can see, the detail is absolutely incredible.[13] I also used to do west Berkshire, including Newbury, I had a chat with the finder. He says almost chucked it out thinking it is a “BOAT”, which is detectorist speak for a “bit of a tractor”, so I took it away and did some research. You can see the impression that is what it would have looked like the other way round. Sadly, we are missing so the lower third or so, but it says “SIGILLVM F[...]II WARINI”, which basically is the seal of Fulk FitzWarin. You might have heard the name FitzWarin; he was a big landowner and actually used to own Wantage as well, many moons ago but we think this is probably FitzWarin the third who, we think, lived from about 1160 to 1258 makes him nearly 100 at his death in the mid-thirteenth century. There is some question over has it somehow got confused with his son, the fourth Fulk FitzWarin[14]. it is quite something, as you can see, the detail on the matrix is amazing you see the folds in his surcoat, the slit in his visor, on the horse you can see the horse harness and also make out his coat of arms on his shield as well. Now why I love this so much is because of who Fulk was. He was a very powerful Marcher Lord, his seat was in Shropshire, and he was he was an incredibly powerful man. He had a little bit of an argument with King John.[15] Fulk was outlawed, and King John set out chasing him around the country trying to capture him to arrest him. In July 1202 Fulk FitzWarin and his followers were holed up at Chippenham in Wiltshire[16] only about 13 kilometres from where this seal matrix found. There was a stand-off kind between Fulk and King John. Fulk managed to escape we do wonder, was this your matrix dropped during this episode and then broken? It must have been cut in half, there is no way you can snap it. It is big and there is no way you can snap it, so it might have been cut in half to ritually kill it. But anyway after a few more months in John and Fulk FitzWarin made-up, he was reinstated, and his land was back to him. In the late 13th century, there is a romantic poem, written about Fulk FitzWarin, and why I love this seal matrix so much. The poem[17] that was written about Fulk and his life, is akin basically to the Robin Hood story, so there is a thought among many scholars that Fulk FitzWarin is the person that Robin Hood is based on.
Outside of the Portable Antiquities Scheme world, like I mentioned before, I do I do all sorts of things: I write articles for metal detecting magazines, I still work with metal detectors closely and perhaps am one of the only archaeologists that does so. There is still there still can be a bit of animosity between detectorists and archaeologists and I am trying to bridge that gap, I also do research as well like I said I work for Oxford Archaeology part time and community projects as well. Obviously, animals always come and come and help. I love the picture on the bottom right. It is my late friend David and that dog would not let up, but fortunately we found a bit of pipe because we were scared he was going to run off with a leg bone or something which would be really bad – an archaeologist running across the Rollrights chasing a dog with a bone in its mouth. The bonus was that did not happen. Tackley Local History Group[18] and working with them for a long time. At the back of left picture is my colleague Alison Roberts from the Ashmolean and I and, you can only see his his legs, John from Tackley Local History Group recording a collection of antiquarian collection of flint from the Neolithic and Mesolithic as well. So, we recorded all those and put onto the Portable Antiquities Scheme database. I work with metal detectorists all the time and I mentioned big rallies the picture bottom right is sort of an idea of how busy the finds tent can get – this one is from Watlington. There were 800 detectorists there. No, I do not do it all myself. I have a team of about five or six to assist and they pay us to do it. Got another one Gloucester and hopefully we can increase the number of people there. Working closely with detectorists you build that trust. Please, if you find something do not just dig it out the ground! It could be in a context, and we need to learn everything about what it is in.
This is the Hambledon Hoard, found down by Henley-on-Thames. Technically this was in Buckinghamshire, just a mile over the border and it has a local postcode. You can see all the people, the area cordoned area off, and it was pretty stressful to say the least. These coins were spread over quite an area, top left you can see the little silver shiny things they were all over the place. But in the end, I think it was a floor of a building and what might have happened is that the coins were in the rafters and the pot that the coins were in fell through. There were 558 various coins including some rare gold nobles. During the hiatus between the end of the Roman Empire and 1348 there were no gold coins in circulation. It is being valued at the moment and hopefully the Henley River and Rowing Museum will be able to acquire it. Fortunately, the landowner is incredibly rich, he is one of the country's richest men but he is also very into history and archaeology and he waived his right to reward. Say its value is £100,000 and he says “no I don't want my reward” that means museum and then you have to pay £50,000 for it. Of course, the Museum had to raise that money. They do not have a pot, so hopefully that is what is going to happen.
This was again detectorists, he stopped digging as he thought you found the rim of the Roman copper vessel. Brilliant well done! It actually was a tar bucket top of a pipe. Never mind the farmer says he did not know that pipe was there, and he probably put the bucket in there anyway. So, it is not all shiny things.
I just wanted to finish off by saying a little bit about the PhD, so I am looking at the Iron Age to Roman transition in Britain from the perspective of coin hoards going to change that pipe list not the sexiest title in the world and from here looking at the continuity and differences in holding practice up to A.D. 96. How holding is related to context that is: landscapes, archaeological site, settlement, temples that kind of thing. What happened to Iron Age coinage? Did hoarding practice change? We know that the minting of Iron Age coins ceased with the Boudican Revolt of A.D. 60/61. Indigenous coinage vanishes to be replaced by the Roman. This shows you the spread of coin hoards, native and Roman from about 200 B.C. up to A.D. 96 which is the end of the Flavian dynasty[19] or Vespasian[20], that is why I have chosen that point. You can see a broadly north westward at the holding spread as we get to A.D. 69, and the Roman invasion, then we get many more coming in and it goes further north or see because the Romans are pushing north and west as well as take control. Top left from, some of the earliest Iron Age coins that we have in this country. It is called broadband status GB meaning Gallo Belgic so the very first coins that we have in Britain were not minted here, they were struck on the continent, and they came over here and they were all gold. That big gold coin is about 8 grammes or so, and then, conversely, the first British coins top right hand of the side. These are from Kent and are a sort of tin alloy, not shiny then. They are very early, about 175 B.C. and then slowly gold coinage starts to spread across the country as so does silver. We get the first writing on coins around about 30 B.C. and it is very Romanised as we can see on the right, a unit of Cunobeline[21]. You have probably heard of him as Cymbeline in the play by Shakespeare. It is very Romanised so this is pre-Roman Conquest that we can see that Roman imperial ideas is starting to sneak into Britain. Give me a couple years and I can come back and talk to you about the amazing discoveries in coin holding. I hope finished out in a couple of years, in the meantime I will carry on working with the metal detectorists, carry on doing settles archaeology happy local history groups as well as giving talks and if you want to see more I to be honest just get the money eBay is about 99p, much cheaper. One covered Oxfordshire there are some lovely Bicester finds in there as well if you are interested and also please do have a look at the Portable Antiquities Scheme website and you can search by map area, or just put in Bicester and you will see all sorts of interesting objects from this area.