Roman Treasures

A detective story

The hero of this treasure story is Dr Ian Stead who worked at the British Museum. In 1988 a dealer asked him if he wanted to buy some miniature Iron Age bronze shields. Dr Stead realised these were very unusual, but he did not know who had found them or where they had come from. Suspecting that they were stolen, he started doing some detective work.

He discovered that the shields were part of an unusual hoard of hundreds of objects dug up near Salisbury, including miniature tools and weapons. The people who had found the hoard were treasure villains - they were trying to sell the objects secretly, instead of declaring their find.

Although it took many years, Dr Stead managed to track down the objects, and even persuaded the finders to show him where they had been originally buried.