Huge Iron Age hoard from Leicestershire

The British Museum unveiled the largest hoard of Iron Age gold and silver coins - more than 3,000 - found in the country yesterday. The coins, amounting to 10 per cent of the total number previously recovered, were found in shallow pits, where it is thought that they had been placed as offerings to pagan gods, on farmland in east Leicestershire.

Also dug up from the site was the first gilded silver Roman helmet found in Britain. Archaeologists said that it provided the first evidence that ancient Britons joined the Roman army before it invaded. Although it has shattered into hundreds of pieces, conservators at the museum hope to rebuild it over several years.

Experts from Leicestershire's Community Archaeology Project, whose members made the find, believe the site was a religious meeting place in the decades before the conquest of Britain in AD43.

Posted by David on April 7, 2003 9:40 PM