Chapter 41 Iron Age Gold Collar
After spending about half an hour, Liang En finally determined the general situation of this small religious place. As he imagined, this religious place belonging to an older era was not that big.
At least judging from the area surrounded by the untrimmed stones and the few pieces of carbonized wood, this religious site is only a small flat land with a diameter of seven or eight meters.
"No wonder this area has been repeatedly used as a settlement by humans in the past ten centuries, not to mention that the terrain in this area is indeed good." After completing the preliminary exploration, Liang En stretched out and observed the surrounding environment.
His current location was on a small hillock at the edge of a field. Behind him was a large leafy forest, and not far in front of him was a winding stream flowing in a valley.
Farther away is a large field of green grass, dotted with short shrubs like plush balls and a few scattered holiday cabins.
Although standing here now, you can feel the fragrance of soil and plants in the air, and what you see is a peaceful natural scenery. But in those ancient times, this was indeed a suitable area for settlement.
For example, the creek below should be a remnant of a tributary of the river in the past. Considering the tonnage of ships in that era, those ships used for communication could have traveled upstream to get here.
This area has plains that produce food and woodlands that produce wood. All in all, this should be a very suitable area for settlement over a long period of time.
According to the map in Liang En's mind, the Viking town should have been built on a small piece of open land by the creek thousands of meters away. During the construction process, some people once found broken pottery shards and even broken iron shards in the ground.
If you consider the location of the town, it is very reasonable for the first people to live on this land to choose to build their religious place on a hill some distance away from the town and surrounded by woods.
Because traditional religions throughout the British Isles worship various trees, for example, the so-called Druid in the Druidism spread in the UK, literally translates to the Oak Sage. One of the most famous is the powerful wizard who followed King Arthur: Merlin.
According to tradition, their religious occasions tend not to be man-made temples. Instead, they are some totem formations made of uncarved stones. For example, Stonehenge, which is scattered across Britain, is often considered their temple in the wild.
The stone circle that Liang En encountered now cannot be compared with Stonehenge in terms of scale, but the principle is exactly the same, and it is also a religious occasion used for sacrifice.
Judging from the carbonized wood, this area was most likely an oak forest in the past. For the Druids, this oak forest is a sacred forest, naturally suitable for religious activities.
The reason why there are now some pine forests around it is also very simple, because during the Age of Discovery, most of the native British oak trees were cut down. And this ancient oak forest is no exception.
And this can explain why the treasure in the impression was unearthed from this place, because both the Gauls and the Celts had the habit of giving various gold and silver jewelry as sacrifices.
In addition to being buried underground in religious ceremonies like this, there are also cases of jewelry being thrown directly into water or swamps along with other offerings.
After standing for a while, Liang En, who was almost rested, picked up the metal detector and began to search carefully in the stone circle.
What was a little surprising was that there was nothing in the center of the stone circle that he had placed high hopes on. Instead, when he searched the place against the wall of the building, the metal detector sounded an alarm.
"It seems that there is a high possibility that this batch of wealth was temporarily hidden after a crisis."
Looking at the location where the metal detector sounded the alarm relative to the stone circle, Liang En quickly came up with a guess. Because of this, it can explain why such a treasure is hidden in an inconspicuous corner of the Holy of Holies.
The next step was excavation work, because both his impression from another world and the conclusion of the current metal detector showed that the buried object was very shallow.
In order to avoid accidentally destroying the treasure while digging, Liang En simply knelt down on the edge of the land, then took out a small shovel used to loosen soil in flower pots and started digging bit by bit.
After digging only a palm deep, a golden light appeared at the bottom of the pit. The part now exposed from the soil is only as long as your little finger, and looks like a spinning ribbon or a drill used to drill holes in the ice.
"Sure enough, it's here." The moment he saw the gold, Liang En suddenly became excited. Because it means he has found what may be the most stunning collection of Iron Age ornaments ever found in Scotland.
If he remembered correctly, the discoverer received £1 million from the museum.
Because the soil in this place is relatively soft, and the treasures are all made of gold. So Liang En simply threw away the shovel that might cause collision and started digging with his hands.
Ten minutes later, four gold collars appeared in front of him. These four gold collars are all European Iron Age decorations and can be divided into three groups in terms of style.
The two collars in the first group are very similar in style, but formed by twisting a long and narrow piece of gold. They clearly have the traditional Celtic style of ancient Scotland and Ireland.
The second group was a tubular collar, but less than half of it was left, and it was broken into two pieces. On the surface, this collar looks a bit like one of those icings on a butter cake.
Based on the professional knowledge Liang En learned in college, he quickly recognized from the style of the collar that this collar came from the area in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea.
As for the necklace in the last group, it is made of gold wire, with two intricate decorations made of gold wire on both ends. It seems that the process complexity is much more complicated than the other three.
Interestingly, the style of the collar itself is a standard local style. But this gold wire weaving technology all comes from ancient Rome and ancient Greece.
In other words, this gold necklace was probably made by a jewelry craftsman who mastered ancient Greek or Roman craftsmanship at the request of a local big shot.
This is actually a very important discovery because it represents 300 years before the ancient Romans came to Britain. Those living in Scotland already had exchanges with France and even southern Europe.
And when all these gold collars were cleared out, Liang En also got two [Detection (N)] and one [Identification (N) card,
After cleaning out all these treasures, Liang En immediately returned to his car with these gold collars, and then spent an hour writing an article combining his findings and speculations with the photos taken during the excavation.
He then emailed the article to the department responsible for underground treasures at the National Museum of Scotland. The reason for this is that it is an independent department that reports only to the Queen and the Royal Treasurer.
Compared with museums, this kind of institution directly affiliated with London is obviously more reliable. This is why Liang En chose to inform them directly.
Of course, he also uploaded those photos and files to the network disk as his last layer of protection.