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Magic beakers & Roman helmets: artefacts that shaped history
00:40:22
Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson explore some of the everyday artefacts and discoveries that have reshaped our understanding of history
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- [00:01]
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- [01:54]
Michael Lewis
Foreign.
- [02:00]
David Musgrove
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Metal detectorists and members of the public have contributed hugely to our understanding of Britain's past through the artifacts that they found hidden in the ground. Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson from the British Museum have written a new book, Beneath Our Feet, which explores some of the everyday discoveries that have reshaped history, from a Bronze Age cup with magical properties to a Roman cavalry helmet that would have been very hard to see out of. They spoke to David Musgrove and the first voice you'll hear is Michael explaining what their book is all about, with Ian appearing later on when we get to the Roman helmet. And if you hear anyone say pas, that stands for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the scheme managed by the British Museum that records Archaeological finds discovered by the public.
- [03:01]
Michael Lewis
Well, the idea is essentially that we wanted to tell the stories of finds found by everyday people, most of them found by the metal detecting community, but essentially finds that aren't made by professional archaeologists. We wanted to tell the story of the find itself, the circumstances of discovery, the. And then also what the kind of wider importance of those objects is as well.
- [03:24]
Ian Richardson
All right, let's talk about a few of the objects and finds that you talk about in the book. We'll kind of go chronologically and we'll start with the Ringlemere cup. What's that?
- [03:36]
Michael Lewis
Well, I mean, it is an amazing object. I was very, very, very lucky to be the find Zen officer in Kent whom this object was reported to. So it's pretty dear to my heart, if you like. Essentially, it's a Bronze Age cup, so it's almost, you know, years old, which is an incredible time period. It was found by this guy, Cliff Bradshaw. He says that he was looking for Anglo Saxons when he was searching for this cup. And when he found it, he knew it wasn't Anglo Saxon, but he didn't know straight away that it was Bronze Age. And he went home, did a little bit of research in his books on history and archaeology. He said to me that when he found it, he thought it was sort of some sort of electrical Victorian electrical fitting or, you know, light fitting, something like that, because it does look kind of modern ish in some respects. It's made of solid gold, it's very thin and it conducts heat in an amazing sort of way. And I'll come back to that in a moment because I think that's. That's something that's really interesting about the object itself. But anyway, when he got home, he looked at his archaeological books and he found a parallel, the Rillington cup that was found in Cornwall many, many years ago, said to be used by one of the kings in the past because it was in the Royal Collection. Put their cufflinks in and it had a flat base, perhaps explaining, you know, why this one's got a rounded base, which is, you know, what makes the object, I think, really, really interesting. Now you notice that the Ringlemere cup's got this massive smash on the side of it. And the archaeologist who was leading the excavation at Ringlemere afterwards reckons he could identify the tractor plough that caused the damage to the Ringlemere and cup. So essentially, if it hadn't been recovered by Cliff, you know, it's almost certain in the next ploughing season it would have been destroyed, demonstrating the importance of metal detect. And as I said, you know, when you touch this object, it generates such heat which, you know, gives it even now, this sort of magical feeling. And I sort of our way of thinking about this object really, is that it was perhaps a ceremonial cup. Maybe it would have had some kind of liquid in it that may have been alcoholic or had other sensory aspects to it that could have been passed from person to person. Its rounded base means you couldn't have easily stood it up. I suppose you could have made a hole in the ground and done that, but it would have been an object that would have been passed round and you. You could imagine both the effects of the liquid. This is a bit of speculation here, but also the kind of heat of the object itself would have given them such a sense that something magic or amazing is going on here. In fact, it kind of reminds me of a modern communion type cup, but obviously well before the Christian religion. So it is a pretty remarkable find in isolation.
- [06:18]
Ian Richardson
Hang on. So when you pick it up, it kind of. It feels warm to the touch.
- [06:23]
Michael Lewis
Yeah.
- [06:23]
Ian Richardson
How's that?
- [06:24]
Michael Lewis
Well, because basically the heat from your hand is being conducted by the heat of the vessel, and it just kind of. You get this sense that it's just starting to warm up in your hand. You do get a sort of magical experience being close to this object, whether that's your mind as well playing tricks on you and stuff like that. Maybe the liquid would have cooled it down, but maybe if it was warm liquid, it would have been even hotter.
- [06:46]
Ian Richardson
You've already sort of touched on it, but when you first saw it, what's that moment like to like, wow, this is something cool?
- [06:54]
Michael Lewis
Yeah. I mean, I was a fine gazing officer, used to seeing lots of archaeological finds, and of course, a lot of people get quite excited about their discoveries. Certainly this object, I was thinking, gosh, I've never seen anything like this. In fact, I showed it to my wife and she said she thought it looked like a baked bean can, which sort of ruined the impact a little bit to me. So different people see these objects in different ways, but for me, it was just like I said, I was just completely surprised by the way it's made. It looks really super uniform. And, you know, it has this kind of. I think a lot of Bronze Age objects do this. For me, the way they have sort of like an art deco sort of feel to them. And you think that this is just like ridiculously far in the past when people are using obviously very, very different tools to what we use today. And they're creating these objects which I understand metal workers today can't create with the same expertise that these people could thousands of years ago. So that for me is just, you know, makes it completely remarkable. What was also interesting, of course, is the first thing you sort of do is when one of these things is found is you think, well, why is this object discovered in the place that it was found? We looked at our maps, we looked at our databases and we couldn't really find any obvious reason why this cup was in this place. Nonetheless, there was an excavation undertaken of the site to understand a context for this. And they found essentially prehistoric sort of features, features in the landscape. So, you know, we weren't able to basically say exactly where this cup was found because it'd been displaced by the ploughs, I said. But there was a broader site that this was part of that was previously unknown. What's really interesting again in this sort of story, which I think is kind of quite funny in a way, is that Cliff all along said he was looking for Anglo Saxons. And lo and behold, at Ringlemere, an Anglo Saxon cemetery was eventually discovered. Quite a few graves and with quite some amazing objects from them as well. So Cliff in the end did get the Anglo Saxons he was looking for, albeit was found through the archaeologists afterwards. There's also in the book, we've got a kind of a replica. It's done by computer stuff, a replica of the cup. And I've got to say, I like the crumble cup more than the original. There are some people, of course, the obvious question, well, are you going to put it back to what it looked like? And, you know, obviously this is, it would seem, modern damage to the cup, but generally speaking, we tend not to change things from the way that they were found.
- [09:24]
Ian Richardson
Well, that takes us on to the next thing, actually. The Crosby Garrett helmet.
- [09:29]
Gosh, that was changed after it was found, wasn't it? Yeah.
- [09:32]
So who's gonna tell me about that?
- [09:34]
I guess I'll tell you some about it. So this was found by metal detectorist father and son, who are remaining anonymous. It was discovered in what was the far reaches, I'd say, of the Roman occupation of Britain. So up in Cumbria, and it's almost a complete Roman cavalry helmet, of which there are very few examples in museum collections that are known to have come from Britain. We have one in the British Museum, the Ribchester helmet. And then there's one more. It's a super impressive object. Immediately when it was discovered, the face mask of it was pretty much complete, as well as lots of bits of the back of the helmet and the crest. And the detectorists obviously knew that was really important. It's perhaps difficult to appreciate when it was seen in its original bits, but they knew immediately that it was a super important object, that it was one of a rare type. And the difficulty, though, was that there was no requirement for the finder or landowner to actually hand it in to be processed under the Treasure act, because it wasn't made of precious metal and it wasn't prehistoric in date. Essentially, it belonged to them. And there was a lot of diplomacy that went into even the limited amount of access that our colleagues got to it, and realizing that it had some financial value behind it, jointly, the finders and landowner decided that rather than sell it or donate it to a museum, they would prefer to sell it at public auction and try to achieve the most amount of money that they could for it. So they took it to Christie's, the London auctioneer, who engaged a professional to restore it. And so we were speaking about the Ringlemere cup and the fact that obviously that's been left in the state in which it was found in this case, because the people who were selling it realized that it would probably command a much higher price if it was more aesthetically appealing. They actually reconstructed it quite sympathetically, I should say, and I don't want to imply that there's any historical inaccuracy in what they've done, but there were bits of the metal that were missing and had to be infilled with replacements. And what you can see now in the reconstruction, those are the photographs that we have in the book. You can see this androgynous face mask that's basically expressionless, and it's got this curly hair framing the face, a tall Phrygian cap and a crest of. I think it's a griffin on the top that was found separately that they've put back on the top. And I mean, I can't lie that obviously it looks pretty impressive now that they've done that work. It also allows you to appreciate more how it would have been used, so they wouldn't have worn this. The Romans would have dated between the 2nd century AD and the 4th century. They wouldn't have used this in battle. It was designed for cavalry displays when they were showing off their horsemanship. And most of the helmet would have been this highly burnished bronze on the top, so it would have gleamed in a golden color. And then the face mask has this silvering to it. So it would have had a silver face mask and a sort of gold top to it and golden hair. So it would have been super impressive. And indeed, it has been on display in various exhibitions and people have been able to appreciate it. It is impressive. But it wasn't able to go into a museum collection by the Treasure act, because it wasn't treasure. It went to this auction. The closest museum was Tully House Museum in Cumbria, and there was a big campaign to try to raise enough money to be able to allow them to outbid other people at this auction. And there was initially some hope that they'd be successful in doing that, but it was, you know, to give the auctioneers their credit. They drummed up a lot of interest in it and unfortunately, Tully House was outbid in the end and it went to a private buyer whose name is also anonymous and no one knows who that is. And it was lost to a public collection. And it has been very good that it's been in various exhibitions since then. It's been on display at the British Museum several times, most recently in the exhibition on the Roman Legions last year. But it is a shame that archaeologists, curators, other specialists weren't able to study it more before it was reconstructed, and that also it is still in this private collection and its fate is ultimately not in the public's gift. The significance to this discovery transcends the object itself, because in the treasure legislation, there was this new provision, a new amendment to the Treasure act that was passed in 2023 to include objects made of metal that provide an exceptional insight into our history or archaeology or culture. And that was really inspired by the case of this discovery, because there was such initially this hope that they might raise the money to acquire it for a museum, and then disappointment and frankly outrage from a lot of people that something of this rarity, this aesthetic quality, this importance, was not automatically offered to a museum in the first place. It caused a lot of people to question what the point of the Treasure act was, if it wasn't protecting things like this, but it was protecting broken silver, medieval finger rings, for instance. And so, after many years of development and consultation, this extension was passed by the government in 2023.
- [15:44]
Must have been quite a thing to be riding a horse, wearing something like that, just looking at it. I mean, I went to an Aliens party fancy dress the other day and I had an ET mask with a very small eyelet, so I couldn't see anything, and that was made of cardboard. Whereas this is a. You've got a massive metal thing on your head and just two small Isn't.
- [16:02]
Michael Lewis
The same with medieval knights though. They are the sort of same thing, don't they? I remember going to Agincourt once and can look through these helmets and see the battlefield and you know, senses are completely evaporated by these little helmets with these little slits. So I guess if you just have to do a sort of function walking around up and down whatever it might be on a horse, then, you know, maybe you don't see too much in.
- [16:24]
Ian Richardson
This sort of scene. But I think that's probably one of the reasons why they didn't use them in battle, I suppose.
- [16:30]
Michael Lewis
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- [17:37]
Ian Richardson
Right, we better move on. Let's talk about the Tu Valley Hoard. That's your wheelhouse, Michael.
- [17:43]
Michael Lewis
So the Tu Valley Hoard is getting on for 2,500 Anglo Saxon pennies and Anglo Norman pennies. So it's almost 50. 50 coins of Harold II, I. E. Harold who did or did not get killed with an arrow in his eye in the Battle of Hastings and William I. So his nemesis and the king thereafter.
- [18:02]
Ian Richardson
And one coin of Edward the Confessor, isn't there?
- [18:04]
Michael Lewis
Well, it's a mule, isn't it? So we have to make that important point that there's a coin which has on one side the coin of Edward the Confessor on the other side, William as well. Now, it was discovered by a team of metal detectorists and I love their sort of story because two of them were based in Lincolnshire and the rest of them were based in the southwest. And they decided to buy this new type of metal detecting machine and kind of have a little outing together to go and sort of try these machines out, not really expecting to find too much and obviously going to land that they'd never really detected before. And they, I'm told, you know, weren't particularly successful to start with. And then they started getting these kind of bleeps and, and, you know, they found a coin of Harold II and then another one and then one of William I and they were getting all of these bleeps and these signals, if you like, beneath their feet. They obviously got super excited because they decided to, you know, keep digging. They did contact or try to contact various archaeologists to try and come out to the site. But as is the case with a lot of these discoveries, they are finding things out of office hours and no one was able to visit the site. Guidance was given to them in terms of how these objects might be recovered. And in the end they accumulated this mass of coins. And one of the finders was telling me that they went to this pub with these coins in the car and they just sat on one side of a table in the pub, looking out the window, drinking these pints almost in silence, in awe of what they've discovered, realising it was, you know, fantastically amazing, but also realizing that they had this hoard that potentially was a life changing amount of money and slightly panicked that it was in their possession. So pretty soon they decided to deposit it with the British Museum and they brought it up to us and we sort of met with them and yeah, it was essentially delivered in bags, like you would deliver kind of bags to your bank in coins. And they were in pretty good condition. And the Conservatives at the British Museum gently clean them as is necessary for identification purposes. And the curator, then Gareth Williams at the British Museum, spent a long time recording these coins individually. Because at this period of time, the coins I think are particularly interesting because on one side, as you'd imagine, there's the monarch's head, which helps you identify which king it is. And on the other side, which I think is even more important, it gives the name of the moneyer. So the person who was responsible for producing the coins and the location in which they minted these coins, all written in Anglo Saxon, of course, so they can be hard to read. And some of these moneys have kind of, you know, wonderful names. And some of these mints are places that are hard for us to know what they are, if we're not an expert in Anglo Saxon coinage, pretty obscure.
- [21:04]
Ian Richardson
Places, too, Pretty small towns.
- [21:06]
Michael Lewis
What's interesting, of course, is they are coins of both Harold and William. One thing it shows us about Harold is how efficient he was in such a short period of time in minting coinage. Soon after, when he became king in January 1066, he obviously got in motion the ability to bang these coins out in considerable numbers at considerable places across the country. And his successor was able to bang these coins out as well. And I think. One thing I think is really interesting about this period of time is the Anglo Saxons had a very, very sophisticated monetary system that allowed them to raise taxation and distribute coinage and control coinage across the country. And what, again, I find fascinating about these coins is how the kings change the designs on coins and then make it the case that everybody has to change their coins to the current version and then essentially trade in at an inflationary rate, the kind of old ones. It's a bit like if you go abroad and you're changing your currency, you know, you're losing out every time you do that. So what essentially people were doing, we believe, is they were holding back what they didn't need to change until they changed it. So they're not changing through too many cycles of monetary change. Quite ingenious in terms of the state's operation, but quite clever in terms of the people who have these savings. Now, again, like a lot of these coin hoards that are discovered, obviously someone has amassed a pretty large amount of money that they've never come back for it. And the question is, why didn't they come back for it? Now, when we're taught about 1066 at school or we study 1066, we're all told that William became king, controlled the country, everybody accepted him as king of England and that was that. But it certainly wasn't the case. The Anglo Saxons were, and probably remain a rebellious lot. Not very happy with their leaders and any opportunity, they're kind of voicing their discontent. And there's a story in 1068 in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that the citizens of Exeter were the first town to fight for their liberty. And they use those words, liberty, to fight against this Anglo Norman regime. And it seems to be that this rebellion was inspired by Harold's mother, Goethe. And in fact, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle also records sons of Harold Godwinson coming over from Ireland back to England, maybe to claim the kingdom. But they really just kind of raided and took wealth. And so it just demonstrates, demonstrates at this time that there's a lot of rebellion, incursions, discontent, and this is obviously the circumstances by which people do put stuff in the ground, and then if they get mixed up in the violence that ultimately follows, that they never come back for the wealth that they've deposited.
- [23:59]
Ian Richardson
So is this hoard a physical manifestation of resistance to William the Conqueror's regime?
- [24:05]
Michael Lewis
I'd love to say yes, definitely. I'd say pretty likely. I think it would be certainly the case that it's indicative of the fact that people didn't necessarily think storing coinage in their houses was the most sensible thing to do, that you might find a safe place elsewhere. But it is today worth a lot of money, and when it was deposited, it was worth considerable amount of money. Gareth Williams, who, like I said, studied the coin hoard, he tried to assess it in value of sheep, which I, in my mind find it quite hard to equate. What does that really mean in coinage? But this would be the value of a small estate, potentially for an annual sort of revenue. So it's, you know, if you think in those terms, you know, of your kind of annual salary, it's quite a hefty amount of money. Now, this find is also really important because it shows some of the problems, I suppose, that can come across in terms of ensuring these objects enter museum collections. So when the hoard was found, as part of the treasure legislation, the finds, the AES and officer and ourselves at the British Museum, we look to see whether museums would be interested in acquiring these objects. And of course, from an archaeological perspective, we want them all to be together. And sometimes that's not possible because of the money needed to acquire these finds. And there was a point that we were concerned, I suppose, that different museums in different parts of the country might acquire one or two examples relating to their area or their kind of museum collection. But thankfully, in the end, Southwest Heritage Trust, on behalf of Taunton Museum, so the Somerset Museum, decided that they would try and acquire the whole hoard in entirety. And that was obviously a massive venture for them, but they were obviously successful in doing that. But it did result in the highest ever rewards being paid for a treasure find of £4.3 million, which is an incredible amount of money.
- [26:07]
Ian Richardson
Yeah. So it's gone from 500 to 4.3 million pounds. That's inflation.
- [26:12]
Michael Lewis
I don't know what a sheep is now. How much is a sheep now?
- [26:14]
Ian Richardson
I don't know the value of a sheep today.
- [26:17]
Michael Lewis
No.
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Ian Richardson
Let's move on to another story, which I think, Ian is kind of closer to your Heart the Prince Henry Frederick Verwell. Tell me who Prince Henry Frederick is before you.
- [26:29]
Ah, yeah, well, he was the first son of James I, so we've gone.
- [26:35]
Way forward in time now. We're up into the 17th century, I think.
- [26:39]
He was born in 15. He was brought up just after his father succeeded Queen Elizabeth and became James I of England and Six of Scotland. He was brought up in this environment where he was encouraged to be this Renaissance man, a champion of Protestant values and break from the old, and was seen as this shining light by people around him, by the public, whereas his father's reception was maybe a bit more ambivalent. There was, it seems to be, this general attitude that, you know, once he succeeds his father, in due course, Britain is going to be on the path to greatness. Unfortunately, he died of, I think it's probably typhoid fever when he was only 18 years old in 1612. And there was a massive outpouring of grief and mourning when that happened. And of course, historically that was very significant because it meant that his brother Charles succeeded him well, became the heir apparent then, and became the new Prince of Wales in due course, and then eventually succeeded his father as monarch. And that had obviously disastrous consequences for the country in terms of the Civil War. So things may have been much different if he'd survived. The object, the verval is connected to him because it's got the crest of Prince of Wales on it and it says an inscription. It's Prince Henry A verval is, or varvel, as they may have been pronounced back in the day. And you see it spelled V A R V E L sometimes as well. It seems to be a word that's inherited from the French. It's a hawking ring or an identification tag used on birds of prey. And particularly prevalent from what we've seen, particularly from the late medieval period up through the time when falconry became much less common amongst the gentry in Britain around 1700. And the idea is that it identifies the owner of the bird in case it's lost. And so they're very tiny objects which would be impossible virtually to find by chance because they typically weigh about a gram. And it's through metal detecting that we've seen now. There's over 150 now recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme, most of them reported as treasure because they tend to be made of silver, but there's some in base metal as well. This particular one, as I say, it's a ring that has an inscription on the outside in letters saying Prince Henry and then it's got a shield shape which has the Prince of Wales ostrich feathers and the ichthyne morto. And it was found, though by detectorists in a place that's not obviously connected with anything we know about Prince Henry Frederick. It's found in North Norfolk in a place called Clay or Clye, next to the sea. I'm not always sure how those words are pronounced. There have been some other vrvals found in the general vicinity within few kilometers. So it may have been a particularly prodigious area to hunt with hawks or falcons, but we couldn't trace that Prince Henry himself had any direct connection with this locale. What we did find, though, when we were studying all the vrvals reported through the PAS is that quite a few of them are found in areas that are nearby to big estates or places of residence. And it seems to be that it was quite common to invite people over to have falconry parties or expeditions or something. So you might find a verval of the Duke of Bedford, but on an estate that was 50 kilometers away or something like that. It's probably not the case that the bird flew from where the Duke of Bedford was lived at Woburn Abbey. It's more likely that he went there with his hawks and visited his friend and decided to do some falconry while he was there. So it's interesting because these objects, their whole purpose is to identify the owner. And so we can see this spread of how popular falconry was amongst the lesser nobility, the gentry, but also the royal family itself in terms of Prince Henry. But also there have been some examples that are linked to monarchs themselves. There's some that bear the coat of arms of King James I and Charles I and other nobles. So they're really tiny artifacts, but they provide this insight into this really popular hobby from the post medieval period, where prior to the port of antiquity scheme and the systematic recording of these finds, they were really only known in some private collections, some museum collections, but only by the handful that we could trace in terms of being publicly available to study. So it's just shown the benefit of this system that we have here of ensuring that we're getting this information down and recorded on a database that now anybody can appreciate it.
- [32:10]
Am I right in thinking you're a verbal guy? Right. You study them and are interested?
- [32:14]
I guess I get tagged with it because like I said, most of them are precious metal. Most of them then come through the treasure process when we get exposed to them. I get to see a lot of them, I guess, and you know, I'd always champion for them to go into museums if at all possible.
- [32:28]
Michael Lewis
Yeah. And I think the other thing, I suppose, is that because they are, like you said, mostly precious metal, they're an interesting artifact type because whereas the other objects, people don't have to necessarily report these ones legally, they do. So we, you know, obviously there's some that people probably don't report, but, you know, we're seeing a good percentage of what's being discovered. But as Ian says, they're kind of most exciting aspect is they can link historical people to places in the landscape, not only where they lived, because they tell you that sometimes because they say, return to Fred wherever he lives. Not a good example, but you know what I mean? And then they also show, as Ian said, where they were doing these hawking activities as well.
- [33:10]
Ian Richardson
For me, it's almost like the ease of understanding them compared to some other objects that we've talked about, things from the Bronze Age and from the Roman period. And when there's other examples that are dated from secure archaeological context, then you can be pretty confident what the object is. But there's lots of stuff that crosses our desks that, particularly from the prehistoric period, you don't really know how they were used, but even from this same period and even within this same sport, because I've been looking at this for a conference that Michael and I are going to. You have other equipment that was used in falconry that may have survived in the archaeological record, like the metal swivels that would have attached to a leash or the bells that a hawk or falcon may have worn on its legs or on its tail. And those objects are so ubiquitous, but also fairly nondescript, that the possible dating range for them is very wide and I think very confusing even for officers who are really skilled archaeologists to date with any precision or to be consistent in the dating of. And so I feel like you can't really get very far with the stories of those. Whereas this, like we've been saying it, links it to specific person, even if you can't identify the individual as we can in this case because of the general form of the objects, but also because of the script, the lettering on them, you can date them fairly accurately so you know how and when they were used and often by whom. So it's. It just allows you to appreciate the object in a different way. With the vast majority of the stuff that we get, we don't know who used it or who lost it, potentially.
- [34:47]
There's loads more stories like this in the book. But to sum up, Michael, we're up to, what did you say, 1.8 million artefacts logged with the PAS. How has it changed our understanding of British history?
- [35:01]
Michael Lewis
These objects have transformed understanding of sometimes local places or added to kind of these historical sort of stories. And I think for me, the kind of fundamental changes really are how different parts of Britain were occupied in the past and the extent of those occupations. The kind of linkage, I suppose, between archaeological sites or historical sites and the material culture that's found through metal detecting. The kind of linkage in terms of transport, trade and communications that these objects show across, you know, gigantic spaces, not only in Britain, but connecting Britain to other parts of the world as well. And in fact, you know, one of the sort of difficulties, I suppose, is because the Portable Antiquity scheme is fairly unique in England and we don't have projects like this recording metal detected fines because of the environment in other countries. I guess to connect Britain through these finds in the way that we might do if we were recording more of these finds in other places as well. So, yeah, fundamentally it's just providing another type of material cultural evidence to that wider understanding of Britain's past. And yeah, I mean, it's very difficult to summarize in a few words really, but it's just completely revolutionary. I think the way we think, I mean, the way I suppose I'd sort of summarize it is that nowadays I don't think it's possible for anyone studying archaeological finds or studying the archaeological landscape to do that without using Portable Antiquity Scheme data.
- [36:39]
Ian Richardson
Well, that seems like a decent summary. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Beneath Our Feet, Everyday Discoveries Reshaping History by Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson is published now by Thames and Hudson and the British Museum and it's a jolly good read. Thank you very much for your time.
- [36:55]
David Musgrove
That was Michael Lewis, head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum, and Ian Richardson, Senior Treasure Registrar, are also at the British Museum. Michael and Ian were talking to David Musgrove. Their book is called Beneath Our Everyday Discoveries Reshaping History and it's out now. And if you'd like to hear more about the portable Antiquity scheme, you can find another podcast interview with Michael Lewis that goes into much more detail about that in our feed. Just search for unburied treasure to bring that up. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.