50 Bronze Age Finds: From the Portable Antiquities Scheme

British Bronze Age artifacts made from copper, bronze, gold, flint, jet, and shale are renowned throughout Europe for their beauty and exquisite craftsmanship. In England and Wales, many new discoveries are made each year by members of the public and recorded with the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme. Recent nationally important finds include the gold lunula from Tarrant Valley (Dorset), the gold and silver striped penannular ring from Havant (Hampshire), and the metalwork hoard from Boughton Malherbe (Kent)—is the third largest metalwork hoard ever discovered in Britain. Here, Dot Boughton and Peter Reavill investigate chance finds and hoards discovered in the past 20 years and use them to discuss the development of the different Bronze Age weapon, tool, vessel, and ornament types from their humble origins to their individual peaks in the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age (c. 2500–700BC).