Earlier in the week, a routine Sunday sweep with a second-hand metal detector in a ploughed field near Puddletown, Dorset produced more than the usual toy cars. Martin Williams, a 43-year-old gardener and hobbyist detectorist, uncovered a small curved bronze object. “I thought it was some sort of badge a child may have worn,” said Williams, according to the BBC. After washing away the soil, he discovered it was a Roman fibula dated between 0 and 200 CE.
A finds liaison officer put the brooch’s age at 1,800–2,000 years, calling it “an interesting item for Dorset” and “not a common type of brooch nationally,” the BBC reported. The officer entered the find into the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and specialists are studying its decoration to learn who might have worn it.
Williams almost discarded the brooch because moments earlier he had dug up only 1960s and 1970s toy cars. “Thank God, as I could’ve easily broken it,” he said.
The brooch joins what Williams described as “around 30 China chests of artifacts” collected in four years of detecting. His trove includes 30 Roman coins, two medieval posy rings, and 14 Bronze Age axe heads now at the British Museum. “After 4,500 years, the feeling you get when you first hold these pieces is incredible,” he said.
Under the Treasure Act 1996, items at least 300 years old containing 10 percent gold or silver must be reported. Amendments in 2023 added that objects older than 200 years and of outstanding historical importance also qualify, even without precious metals. If the brooch meets the standard, a museum can acquire it, with any reward split between Williams and the landowner; otherwise, Williams said he would “gift it to the estate owner in gratitude for the opportunity to search on his land.”
The landowner withheld the field’s exact location to deter trespassers after Williams’s earlier discovery of the axe hoard. Williams thinks the fibula might relate to an abandoned medieval church believed to have stood nearby. “There is no Roman road through that field, but I believe there is an abandoned church nearby,” he said.
Williams took up metal detecting three years ago after moving to Dorset with his teenage son. The pair have found “hundreds of historical objects,” the BBC noted, and local clubs have halted new memberships amid soaring interest that many link to the BAFTA-winning sitcom Detectorists.
While experts examine the fibula, Williams continues scanning the countryside. “I love the buzz of finding something untouched for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, and then linking it together with history,” he said.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.