Finds timeline

Every find on Global Finds, placed when it was made, lost or buried, with the landmarks of UK history above it. Drag to move through time, scroll or pinch to zoom, and click anything for the details.

60 finds on the timeline, 59 of them dated by when they were made or buried. History events link to the full British Isles Timeline. The great historical finds have their own page: Famous finds.

Why the dates matter

A find on its own is an object. Put it on a timeline and it becomes a moment. The Hoxne Hoard was buried shortly after AD 407, just as Roman rule in Britain was ending, and someone packed a wooden chest with nearly 15,000 coins and never came back for it. The Lenborough coins went into the ground around 1035, at the end of Cnut’s reign. Hoards cluster around times of trouble, because people bury their wealth when they fear for it, and they fail to recover it when things go badly for them.

Most dates come from the newest object in the find. A hoard can’t have been buried before its latest coin was struck, so that coin sets the earliest possible date, and archaeologists narrow it down from there with the container, the soil around it and other finds nearby. Jewellery and weapons are dated by their style, and some objects by scientific tests. That is why many finds here show a range rather than a single year.

Switch to When found and the same finds tell a different story: the history of finding itself. A handful turned up by ploughs and builders before the 1970s, then far more once metal detectors became affordable, and a steady stream of recorded finds since the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme began in 1997.