An iron sword in an iron scabbard, bent in half and on display together with two bronze suspension loops and its last owner (below) in a museum setting

An iron sword in its iron scabbard, bent in half and buried over 2,000 years ago

Ritually 'killed' so that it could not be repaired nor used by another, this Iron Age weapon was found alongside its last owner

From North Bersted #Sussex 2008. Now in the Chichester Novium

📷 March 2026

#FindsFriday

A cute figurine of a bear made from amber. It looks like a gummy bear

A figurine of a hippo with a hole in his back and a loop of gold going through the hole. The figurine is made of a transparent glassy material. Rock crystal, perhaps. It looks not unlike a Foxe's glacier mint.

A carved bust of a bearded man in a brown material, against a red background. If you told us it was carved from chocolate, we wouldn't argue.

A figurine of a hippo in a green material (nephrite, apparently, whatever that is). It looks like it could be a wine gum, but one of the green ones that no one really likes.

Today we will be mainly posting pictures of artefacts that look like sweets. 🍬🍫

There’s much more to this site in By the Medway Marsh: www.pre-construct.com/product/by-t...
20% off this week as we make way for new monographs

For #FindsFriday a Roman enamelled stud from the site of a mausoleum that stood for 700 years overlooking the Medway marshes. Here, a woman in a lead-lined coffin, nearby Roman silverworking, and rare Anglo-Saxon finds point to a site that remained meaningful across changing worlds. #RomanBritain

This site is one of a series featured in our excavation booklets, all available to read as free interactive flipbooks.

They’re full of images, so good Easter weekend browsing:
www.pre-construct.com/pca-booklets/

Reconstruction of the Bedale enclosure overlaid on an aerial photo of the site during excavation.

Slot through the enclosure ditch, showing stones tumbled from the bank into the cut, with distinct fills visible above.

The heated room of the Aiskew Roman villa during excavation, with pilae stacks that once supported a much higher floor. An area of burning at top right marks the location of the furnace that heated the room.

Construction of a new road revealed something already written into the landscape.
An Iron Age enclosure and a Roman villa lay 1km apart, on slightly higher ground above the floodplain. Between them ran a route, a precursor of the modern bypass.
The same route, reused and redefined across centuries.

Find out more in Temples and Suburbs
20% off this week as we make space for new titles

www.pre-construct.com/product/temp...

also available as a free download

This canister was left in a ditch near a Roman temple in Southwark nearly 2,000 years ago.

When it was opened, it was found to contain a white cream still holding the fingerprints of the last person to touch it.

Closed and set aside, a moment caught, right down to the fingerprint.

#FindsFriday

Two Roman tombstones depicting cavalrymen on horseback riding down an enemy, with colour projected onto them to show how they may originally have been painted

Tombstones of two #Roman auxilliary cavalrymen who both died in Britain during the 1st century AD

Dannicus (from Switzerland) and Genialis (from the Netherlands)

Illuminated in colour, to show how they may have originally looked, in the Corinium Museum #Cirencester

📷 Aug 2022

#RomanFortThursday

This Neolithic end scraper came from a pit packed with artefacts in the New Forest. The pit is part of a wider cluster, probably representing seasonal activity. These deposits may mark the closing of individual episodes of activity at a site revisited over generations.
#FindsFriday #FlintFriday

Tomorrow is #InternationalPiDay celebrating π.

Matching this Black-burnished ware triangular-rim bowl to a chart estimates its diameter. Roman pottery is full of circles, and therefore π!

These were nicknamed pie dishes, though there’s no evidence Roman pies were baked in them.

#FindsFriday

www.pre-construct.com/news/three-c...

These Celtic coins - plated copies of Ambiani staters struck from the same dies - ended up buried together centuries later in a Roman ditch in Hertfordshire.

Recently another small group of plated staters turned up in a 1st-century ditch. A pattern emerging, or simply coincidence?

#FindsFriday

1. a bracelet fragment; 2. part of a large armlet, possibly unfinished; 3. a shaped bead with a mis-drilled hole; 4. a large, undecorated bead; 5. an unfinished worked piece; 6. a finger ring with a plain rectangular panel; and 7. the shank of a dress or hair pin.

For #FindsFriday we have a #Roman jet/shale assemblage from a coastal site in NE England, close to natural jet deposits and shale outcrops.

The presence of unfinished pieces and production errors suggests that people living nearby made them, profiting from a valuable local resource. Details below!

A Late Roman graffito from Bishop’s Stortford has revealed a personal name, LOVERNICCA. It has been identified by Roger Tomlin as a Celtic woman’s name containing the name-element louerno, meaning fox. A small mark that bring a real life back into focus - Vixen of Bishop’s Stortford.
#FindsFriday

This deep red, heart-shaped handaxe may already have been ancient when it was swept into Ice Age deposits around half a million years ago. It was found in Suffolk, where finds of this age are rare outside river gravels, making this an exceptional discovery.
#FindsFriday #Palaeolithic #Valentine

An iron bread shovel used to take bread in and out of the ovens.

Tile-built base of a large Roman bread oven, one of two constructed within a shared open room, indicating commercial-scale bread production rather than domestic use.

Detail of third-century mosaic from St-Romain-en-Gal showing a Roman bread oven in use.

For #FindsFriday we’re celebrating the Roman festival of Fornacalia, the Feast of Ovens, held each February.

Baking hearths were honoured as the goddess Fornax to ensure good bread & large ovens in the City of London show how commercial baking fed Roman London, with an iron shovel found with them.

8 INCREDIBLE Archaeology Discoveries from January 2026 YouTube video by Inside Archaeology

We’re happy to share a new Inside Archaeology video, where Rachel chats with the PCA team who discovered the Norfolk carnyx. They reflect on excitement of discovery.
Thanks to Rachel for bringing the team together!
The PCA section begins at 13:51.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdIK...

This mysterious object from Kent is a bifacially worked axehead or handaxe. It resembles a #Mesolithic transverse or tranchet axehead, however given it's heavily worn condition and the gravel from which it was recovered it may be a #Palaeolithic handaxe of an unusually elongate form.
#archaeology

A detail from a Roman mosaic showing a boar in profile with his head to the right, emerging from reeds. The boar is realistically drawn in detail, with his short tail, ridge fur and tusk shown. Below his feet are shadows to indicate that he is moving.

A certain Iron Age boar has been attracting attention recently, so for this #MosaicMonday here's a perky Roman boar. He's from the wonderful Triumph of Neptune and the Seasons mosaic from La Chebba, now in the Bardo in Tunis, and he represents Winter.
#AncientBlueSky 🏺

Stylised long snouted animal with big eyes drooping over a conical base in green bronze.

For #FindsFriday & #BoudicaFriday let’s stick to Iron Age Norfolk Iceni metalwork - behold this ‘long-snouted animal’ mount found at Snettisham, c.300-100BC. Possibly from the base of a drinking horn, there is something of the droopy, sleepy carnyx about it…
British Museum
#Echolands

More in our latest post 😊

We love this Playmobil version!

Our #FindsFriday today is the boar standard from the Norfolk hoard.

www.pre-construct.com/news/the-nor...

Boar standards carved among the captured arms on the Arc de triomphe d’Orange, shown raised on poles above shields and armour as part of Roman representations of Gallic warfare. Photograph: Arc antique d’Orange (detail) by EmDee, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source: Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arc_antique_d%27Orange_-_02.jpg

Today’s #FindsFriday is the head of the Norfolk boar standard! Its fierce face was the first sign, on site, of the Iron Age hoard featured this week on Digging for Britain.

www.pre-construct.com/news/the-nor...

#IronAge #Archaeology #NorfolkCarnyx

Love this so much! 🤣

You've caught its expression perfectly

Wonderful!

Playmobil Cacofonix the bard blowing a miniature reproduction of the Norfolk carnyx, on a green field with other Iron Age Playmobil figures in the distance.

The Norfolk Carnyx: a Playmobil story in 4 parts. 🧵
#DiggingForBritain
#DrawingDiggingForBritain
#PlaymobilInfestation
@profaliceroberts.bsky.social
@pcaarchaeology.bsky.social

1: Life

A sketch of the carnyx found at Thetford

Phenomenal. The Thetford Carnyx sound by @pcaarchaeology.bsky.social and seen tonight on #diggingforbritain