Metal Detecting Anglo-Saxon and Viking 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 Anglo-Saxon and Viking period 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 Anglo-Saxon and Viking land, then this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Villanueva
• Release date: Mar 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005175764

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 a further nine books in the metal detecting, treasure hunting and family history genres.

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Metal Detecting Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain

David Villanueva

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Chris Kutler, ARCHI UK (Archaeology) Ltd, for facilitating the distribution maps and for permission to reproduce them.

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.

The withdrawal of the Roman legions in the early fifth century left Britain less well defended against invaders from Scotland and from the sea. Sea going bands of Angles, Jutes and Saxons, who had designs on plunder and rich agricultural lands, continually raided the South and East coasts as they had under the Romans. From about 450 they settled in small independent communities, supplied by sea from their homelands. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us the Jutes, led by brothers Hengist and Horsa, were invited to assist the native Britons repel the invading northern Scots and Picts, in exchange for food, money and land. (Fig.1) This arrangement worked well until the Jutes decided conquest was preferable to servitude and joined forces with the Picts and Scots against the Britons. The Jutes took the land of Kent, southern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Meanwhile the Angles and Saxons colonised the east and south coasts, spreading westwards and northwards until by 600 only Cornwall, Devon, Cumbria, Scotland and Wales remained of the old British or Celtic kingdoms. (Fig.2)

Fig.1 Treaty of Jutes Hengist and Horsa with Prince Vortigern of Kent

Fig.2 Britain about 600

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were neighbours in their Germanic homeland with similar cultures and for simplicity I will call them all Anglo-Saxons. They probably understood the Roman