Andy Agate

New Forest hoard of 70 coins dug up in lockdown fetch over £380k The 69 gold coins and one silver were found in a garden in Milford on Sea in April 2020.

Today's news:

What happens when museums can't afford to buy coins...

'Auctioneer, David Guest said the "stunning" coins were sold to "bidders from all over the world and exceeded my expectations".'

Bidders.
From.
All.
Over.
The.
World.

😡

#Archaeology 🏺 #Detecting
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

An important continuation of the discussion

I would imagine the need for farmers to diversify to maintain income has played a role. My experience of more intensive farming practices, aa a FLO, has been it reduces access to land a little. Direct drilling of seed means less ploughing, and two crops a year, so less fallow time for access.

It is! Thank you. The colours in your paining are exactly what come into my mind when I think of my birthday! A real treat to see it this morning!

“Who Pays for the Hobby?”: Metal Detecting in England and Wales [A download/print PDF version can be found at the end of the paper] This is a first for The Big Book of Torcs. Today, I open up BBoT to a guest blog, written by a friend and archaeological colleagu…

A guest blog, which adds more detail to the narrative of detecting in England & Wales.

Thank you to my anonymous colleague for writing this important piece & for allowing me to host it on the Big Book of Torcs! 😊

#Archaeology #Detecting #Torcs #gold #Treasure

bigbookoftorcs.com/2025/11/08/w...

How lush! I'm counting that as a birthday prestige! So beautiful.

These are often mistaken for Early-Medieval pins but they are medieval strap ends. Only one published example is known from a 14th-15th-century context in Hartlepool. Some feature a terminal cross as on 13th-14th-century strap-ends. #FindsFriday finds.org.uk/database/art...

Start again!!

THIS IS SO GOOD

The one thing with Reeves and tax rises: where is the sense that this is being done for a positive reason? The narrative is still crisis.

Your timely reminder that the arseholes™️ aren't bothered that the person in custody was born in the UK, or is a Brit citizen, because to them being a tad darker than magnolia means you're a migrant by default. Pointing it out to them isn't going to change their screeching

Another own goal and they're not even playing any serious opposition.

You know you are welcome!

..with a lot of rally organisers perhaps making a tax free living from a finite resource. What is to be done?

My host institution does not appreciate nor understand what I do, or capitalise on the people I bring into the museum; all of whom want to engage with the heritage and culture that metal detecting can be a part of informing. We can see the cliff edge of an increasingly commercial hobby...

I'm am FLO, approaching retirement, and agree with all of this. Arguments about how fit for purpose the PAS is rest on defining what that purpose is. We are constantly on the rack between archaeologists and metal detectorists. My job is amorphous, neither one thing or the other.

The problem is, he is living amoung is and we just don't know anything about him. He seems to be sexual predator, but we just can't find any reliable information. He flies the flag, but has he ever had a patriotic bone in his body?

Every football match in England: No Room for Racism

English media and politics: Very Much Room for Racism

If only they waited for archaeological help, it could have been an amazing find.

I hear the Epstein Ballroom will be illuminated solely by gaslighting.

Stewart Lee: Homosexuals and feminists face execution in Saudi. Now they’ve got the standups on to them as well On the centenary of his birth, what would legendary satirist Lenny Bruce and a generation he inspired make of those on stage at the Riyadh comedy festival?

“Homosexuals and feminists face execution in Saudi Arabia. Now they’ve got the standups on to them as well” says STEWART LEE www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...

Well, I could have guessed that - don't we all, with grim regularity, at this stage?

On the bright side, you could be writing it long hand and you'd have got through another pair of glasses. That there zoom costs nowt!

Oh, those first two albums. What a time!

This amazing object is a Bronze Age palstave axehead c.1500-1250 BC. The axe would be hafted to a forked wooden handle held in place by high flanges & deep stop ridge. It is decorated with a trident-like shield design. #FindsFriday finds.org.uk/database/art...

You're so right about that, plus a heafty dose of paranoia, and Dunning-Kruger on steroids.

'I've spent thousands of pounds, and spent thousands of hours looking for finds for you people, and this is the thanks I get'.

If the metal detecting community thought they would not get full 'value' for 'their' finds they would just stop reporting Treasure and things would get worse. As a metal detectorist said to me a little while ago, when he thought he was being disrespected,

Badenoch reading Vimes' Boots Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness and thinking how much more economic growth comes from making poorer people buy cheap boots over and over

I came here to chew gum and call out lies on Twitter... and I'm all out of gum.
(Photo @politicalpics)