The finds every detectorist knows: hoards turned up by ploughs, builders and fellow detectorists, and the treasures that changed what we know about the past. Oldest first, by when they were made or buried. Each one is on the finds timeline too.
Made about 1950 to 1750 BC · found 2001
In 2001 a detectorist in Kent found a crushed gold cup in a ploughed field. It was a rare Early Bronze Age cup, and the excavation that followed his report found an ancient monument hidden beneath the field.
Made about 1900 to 1600 BC · found 1833
In 1833 workmen taking stone from a burial mound at Mold in Flintshire found a cape of beaten sheet gold, made around 1900 to 1600 BC. Nothing like it has been found anywhere else in the world.
Made about 1800 to 1600 BC · found 1837
In 1837 workmen taking stone from a burial cairn on Bodmin Moor found a gold cup beaten from a single sheet. It went to the Crown, spent a century in royal palaces, and now stands in the British Museum beside the Ringlemere Cup.
Made about 150 to 50 BC; buried around 50 BC · found 1950
Over more than 40 years, ploughing and metal detecting at Ken Hill near Snettisham in Norfolk turned up at least 14 hoards of Iron Age gold and silver, among them the Great Torc, a masterpiece of Celtic art.
1st century BC · found 1896
In 1896 two ploughmen near Limavady turned up a hoard of Iron Age gold, including a miniature boat complete with oars. A famous court case in 1903 decided it was treasure trove, and it went to Dublin.
Buried around 50 BC · found 2012
In 2012 two Jersey detectorists who had searched the same area for 30 years found a hoard of nearly 70,000 Iron Age coins and gold jewellery. It is the largest Celtic coin hoard ever found.
Coins of AD 253 to 293; buried soon after · found 2010
In 2010 a detectorist near Frome found a pot holding 52,503 Roman coins, the largest Roman hoard ever found in a single container in Britain. He stopped digging and called in the experts.
Made in the 4th century AD · found 1942
In 1942 a ploughman at West Row in Suffolk struck a hoard of 34 pieces of late Roman silver tableware. His employer took it home and kept quiet about it for four years before the world found out.
Made in the 4th century AD · found 1975
In 1975 a ploughed field at Water Newton, on the site of a Roman town near Peterborough, gave up 28 silver and gold objects marked with Christian symbols, the earliest known Christian church silver from anywhere in the Roman Empire.
Buried around AD 350 · found 2013
In November 2013 a detectorist in east Devon found a hoard of 22,888 Roman coins, reported it at once and helped archaeologists dig it out. Its first coin became the one-millionth find recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
Buried around AD 390, or perhaps as late as 420 to 440 · found 1979
In 1979 a detectorist dug up a late Roman hoard of gold jewellery and silver spoons on a Thetford building site, and didn't report it. By the time archaeologists heard, the findspot had been built over.
Buried in the early 5th century AD · found 1919
In 1919 archaeologists digging a hillfort in East Lothian found more than 20 kilograms of late Roman silver, deliberately cut and crushed into pieces. It is the largest hoard of Roman hacksilver ever found.
Buried shortly after AD 407 · found 1992
In 1992 a farmer lost a hammer and asked a friend with a metal detector to find it. He found the Hoxne Hoard instead: nearly 15,000 Roman coins and 200 pieces of gold and silver, now in the British Museum.
Buried about 610 to 635 · found 1939
In 1939 a self-taught archaeologist uncovered the outline of a 27-metre ship under a Suffolk burial mound, and inside it the richest Anglo-Saxon burial ever found: a helmet, gold and garnet fittings and silver from Byzantium.
Buried between AD 650 and 675 · found 2009
In 2009 a Staffordshire detectorist found the first pieces of what is still the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered: almost 4,000 objects and fragments, most of them fittings from weapons.
Buried after 870, in the late 9th century · found 1999
In 1999 archaeologists on a Gotland farm found 67 kilograms of Viking silver, more than 14,000 coins and nearly 500 arm-rings, hidden beneath the floor of a storehouse. It is the largest Viking silver hoard ever found.
Buried in the late 870s · found 2015
In 2015 a detectorist near Watlington in Oxfordshire found a Viking hoard of about 200 silver coins, ingots and jewellery. Its rare Two Emperors pennies show Alfred the Great sharing power with a Mercian king history almost forgot.
Buried around AD 900 · found 2014
In 2014 a metal detectorist in Dumfries and Galloway found more than 100 objects of silver, gold and rare materials, buried in carefully wrapped parcels around AD 900. It was valued at £1.98 million.
Buried around 905 · found 1840
In 1840 workmen repairing a riverbank near Preston dug into a lead chest packed with about 40 kilograms of Viking silver: thousands of coins and more than a thousand ingots, arm-rings and pieces of hacksilver.
Buried around 928 · found 2007
On 6 January 2007 a father and son detecting near Harrogate found a Viking hoard of 617 silver coins and gold and silver jewellery, packed into a gilded cup made in the Frankish empire. It was valued at £1,082,000.
Buried around 1035 · found 2014
More than 5,000 silver pennies of Æthelred II and Cnut, buried in a lead parcel around 1035 and found at a detecting club rally near Buckingham in 2014. Valued at £1.35 million, the hoard is now in Aylesbury.
Made about 1150 to 1200 · found 1831
Found on the Isle of Lewis by 1831, the Lewis Chessmen are 93 pieces carved from walrus ivory and whale tooth in the late 1100s, among them the famous shield-biting warriors. They are now split between London and Edinburgh.
Buried between winter 1463 and summer 1464 · found 1966
In 1966 a mechanical digger on a building site at Ravenshead in Nottinghamshire turned up 1,237 gold coins and pieces of jewellery, hidden during the Wars of the Roses. It is the largest hoard of medieval coins ever found in Britain.
Buried between 1640 and 1666 · found 1912
In 1912 workmen demolishing a building in Cheapside, in the City of London, broke into a buried box holding about 500 pieces of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery: the stock of a 17th-century goldsmith.
Coins dated 1847 to 1894; buried some time after · found 2013
Walking their dog on their own land in 2013, a California couple spotted a rusty can sticking out of the ground. It was the first of eight, holding 1,427 gold coins worth about $10 million.
