Metal Detecting Iron Age Britain

By David Villanueva

While I would never turn down the opportunity of metal detecting on any land, as nobody knows what might have been lost or buried anywhere in the past, if we habitually search sites where nothing much ever happened then usually our find bags will contain nothing much! Site research not only results in more and better quality finds but also provides some reasons as to why we find things where we do, which adds interest and a sense of history to our fascinating hobby and helps you to find more.
In this book we will look at the Iron Age of British history to discover what our ancestors were doing and where they may have deposited metalwork either by accident or design, so that you can find a larger share from that era.
If you would like to hone your skills in researching and searching Britain’s Iron Age land, then this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Villanueva
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005955601

David Villanueva

David Villanueva (1951- ) was born in Birmingham, England, where he grew up. In the early 1970s his mother bought him a copy of Ted Fletcher's book A Fortune Under Your Feet, which, together with David's great interest in history inspired him to buy a metal detector and take up treasure hunting as a hobby. Family stories about the origins and history behind David's Spanish surname also spawned the hobby of genealogy. A career move brought David to Whitstable in Kent, England, and it was here that David's love of history research developed into great success both in metal detecting and family history research. A little later David felt the urge to put pen to paper and started writing articles for the two British metal detecting magazines - Treasure Hunting and The Searcher – which have published more than two dozens of David's articles between them. Success in writing articles soon led to David's first book: The Successful Treasure Hunter's Essential Dowsing Manual: How to Easily Develop Your Latent Skills to Find Treasure in Abundance, published in both digital format and paperback. To date, David has written over a dozen books in the metal detecting, treasure hunting and family history genres.

Book preview

Metal Detecting Iron Age Britain

Borough Hill Iron Age hillfort, Leicestershire. Photo: Nev1, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

David Villanueva

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Acknowledgements

Several images are reused in this book, with grateful thanks, under various Creative Commons Licences. To view copies of these licences, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

There were significant changes in the affairs of man around 1,000 BC. The use of iron for tools and weapons was spreading westward from Asia. Cremations gradually replaced barrow burials and ramparts started to be built around some settlements, particularly on higher ground. The Iron Age reached continental Europe in 800BC followed by Britain in 700BC and from then the number of defended settlements, known as hillforts, expanded. There are over 3,300 British hillforts. Most of these are in the west of Britain and also southern England, the Welsh marches and the Scottish borders. The majority of British hillforts covered an area of less than 3 acres (1 hectare), with most others reaching up to around 30 acres (12 hectares) and sometimes larger. (Fig.1) There is a useful list of