3/7/24 Report - Spanish Treasure of Villena. Bronze Age Iron: Meteoric or Smelted? Junking Around For Modest Finds.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

Have you ever heard of the Treasure of Villena?  I think you probably have. It is a Spanish Treasure hoard and one of the greatest hoard finds from the Bronze Age.  Discovered in 1963, in the hoard are 59 objects made of gold, silver, iron and amber with a total weight of almost 10 kilograms, 9 of them of 23.5 karat gold. This makes it the most important find of prehistoric gold in the Iberian Peninsula. The gold pieces include eleven bowls, three bottles and 28 bracelets. But if that is not enough, the iron objects are thought to be made of meteoric iron. Iron smelting was not common as early as the Bronze Age. (See Wikipedia)

Below are pictures of the two iron items.  The first is overlaid with gold, but underneath is an iron bowl or helmet-like object.  So if iron was not smelted at that time, how did it come to be part of a Bronze Age hoard?

Source: Vista de ¿Hierro meteórico en el Tesoro de Villena? | Trabajos de Prehistoria (csic.es)

Recent analysis suggests that the iron of these two artifacts is of meteoric origin, which makes the Bronze Age date of the items possible.

Source: Vista de ¿Hierro meteórico en el Tesoro de Villena? | Trabajos de Prehistoria (csic.es)

And above is the iron bracelet.

See also Meteoric iron in the Villena Treasury? | Prehistory Papers (csic.es) and This Spanish Treasure Partly Comes from Outer Space (msn.com)

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I took my metal detector out to do a little junking in an extremely trashy area.  I tried to see if I could pick out a few coins from all the other junk, metal and otherwise, and failed.  What got tried was my patience, which is normally pretty good, but this was a real challenge.  There were many bottle caps of various types and sizes that gave signals very much like coins in addition to all the other metal and non-metallic junk.  Despite all the trash I managed to pick out a few somewhat interesting finds.

Mystery Item.

When I picked up the item shown above, I thought it was a hose nozzle and stuck it in my bag, but when I got back home and took a closer look, I found out that it wasn't what I thought it was.  I don't know what it is, can you help me with that?

It has two holes - a smaller one near the top (you can see it), as well as a larger one near the middle.  It appears that there is a smaller tube running up through the object, perhaps to the smaller hole near the top/  I haven't researched it at all yet.  Any ideas?

Despite the fact that I've been over the same area a few times recently and thinking the finds should be thinned out considerably, I still found a couple older bottles.  One is an unmarked medicine or pharmacy bottle shown below and the Listerine, Lambert Pharmaceutical Company bottle (also shown below), which is a very common type of bottle find.  This is one of the older ones.  

Medicine Bottle Find.

Stained Listerine Bottle.

This is a clear glass bottle but is heavily stained.

Although these bottles aren't great, it does show that there are still some older bottles in the area and there is still the possibility of something good popping up if I want to cover the area again.

There were other items found too.  

Lipstick Tube, Marble and Knob Finds.

I thought the bigger round object was an old marble at first, but later saw that it has a hole in it and was probably a knob.

A very junky area like this one will test anybody's patience, but if you stick at it a little, working in heavy trash will help you improve your metal detector skills.  It will also make most beach detecting seem like a breeze.

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There are no changes in the predictions that will dramatically affect beach metal detecting conditions.

Good hunting,

Treasureguide@comcast.net

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After my mother passed away and I was cleaning out her house, which means going through all the worldly belongings she had at the time she died, I came across her master's thesis.  It was hard bound in a blue cover, just like mine that is also stored in a box somewhere.  I knew the basic content of her thesis, including the research question and conclusions, and didn't bother to read it, but it caused me to reflect about the things we do in life and that are important to us at various stages.  

If you go to graduate school, it certainly seems like a big deal at the time.  First is all the work to get admitted.  It costs a lot, takes a lot of time, and presents certain challenges and you are evaluated all along the way.  When you graduate, it seems like a big deal.  And it does promise more job opportunities and higher pay and status in the line of work. But when graduation time comes, the big feeling is that you finished it.  It is one of those big markers in life.

But as I sat on the floor surrounded by boxes and books and things that she once got and kept for some reason, now they were left behind.  They weren't important to anybody.  Nobody cared about them like she did.  They didn't mean much of anything to anybody else.