A gigantic gold torc, so big one expert thinks it may have been worn to protect a pregnant woman, has been found by a metal detectorist in a ploughed field in Cambridgeshire. The find site is within 50 miles of Must farm, the extraordinary bronze age village in the shadow of a chip factory on the edge of Peterborough. Wilkin said the workmanship was astonishing: the torc was shaped from a square section bar of gold, and then twisted and burnished. The slightly shorter and lighter Corrard torc, found in Northern Ireland, was valued at up to £150,000 three years ago. One of the oddest recent treasure finds was a criminal’s hoard of hundreds of what look like blackened toenail cuttings, from Gloucestershire.

Source: The Guardian November 28, 2016 16:31 UTC