A Metal Detectorist Found a Bronze Age Hoard in a Stone Pile. It May Unlock an Ancient Secret.

First came the Peebles Hoard, discovered in the Scottish Borders in 2020 by metal detectorist Mariusz Stepien: hundreds of items, including never-before-seen bronze fittings. Now, thanks to the newly announced discovery of the Blyth Hoard, we may know where those fittings were made.

In 2022, Stepien used his metal detector to locate a 3,000-year-old axe head tucked inside an ancient stone cairn in the Scottish Borders near Blyth Bridge (hence the name). He quickly reported the find to the Treasure Trove Unit, and archaeologists from National Museums Scotland went on to excavate a group of Late Bronze Age objects dated to roughly 1150 to 800 B.C.E. Among them were two—possibly three—partially surviving clay molds, potentially the very molds used to cast the unique bronze fittings found seven miles away.

“This is one of those classic archaeological finds that initially doesn’t look like much, but is actually really incredible and has many stories to tell,” Matthew Knight, curator of prehistory and Bronze Age collections at National Museums Scotland, said in a statement. “It’s really rare for mold materials to survive at all, so it’s a special find in its own right, but the proximity and relationship to the Peebles Hoard makes it all the more extraordinary.”

Alongside the molds, the Blyth Hoard includes a second bronze axe head and a complete copper ingot, the first of its kind ever found in Scotland. Such raw metal ingots are blocks of material that workers melted down and shaped into finished pieces.

“When I first discovered the Blyth Hoard, I was excited to have found more Bronze Age material in an area that I already knew was archaeologically significant,” Stepien said in the statement. “At that stage, I had no idea just how important the discovery might turn out to be. Having previously discovered the Peebles Hoard, it is quite extraordinary to think that two discoveries I made so close to one another could be connected.”

Molds of this kind typically produced swords, axe heads, or other tools, but the Blyth molds appear to have formed the unusual bronze fittings found in the Peebles Hoard. The hoard was also deliberately placed inside the cairn and covered over. Taken together, museum experts believe, the burial of raw material and casting molds suggests the items were left there by a metalworker—possibly the same one who made the objects in the Peebles Hoard. Burnt material tucked in with the objects helped preserve the molds and may indicate that the site is where the clay molds were once fired.

“Finding something is one thing, but seeing the amount of work that goes into understanding, preserving, and researching it has been a really interesting part of the whole experience,” Stepien said. “I’m very pleased to have been able to play a small part in that process, and I’m looking forward to seeing what further research and conservation can reveal about both hoards and, ultimately, about the people behind them.”

Researchers at the museum have already found that the bronze in the Peebles Hoard has an unexpected silver hue, likely thanks to high levels of tin on the surface, which they attribute to a deliberate enrichment technique employed by skilled craftspeople. The copper ingot adds another layer to that story. More commonly found in southern Britain and never before recorded north of the Scottish border, it shows that raw materials were imported into Scotland 3,000 years ago and may help explain where the metal itself originated.

“People weren’t simply recycling existing objects,” according to a museum statement. “There was a supply of fresh metal into the area.” That metal likely supplied the material for both hoards.