Few archaeological discoveries begin with a goal as ordinary as finding a misplaced tool. Yet on November 16, 1992, a search for a lost hammer in a Suffolk field led to one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries in British history. Eric Lawes, a retired gardener and amateur metal detectorist, had been asked to help tenant farmer Peter Whatling locate his missing hammer at Hoxne, in eastern England. Instead of immediately finding the modern object, Lawes received a signal from beneath the soil and began uncovering pieces of gold and silver. The discovery became known as the Hoxne Hoard, the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain.
The circumstances surrounding the discovery make the Hoxne Hoard particularly captivating. Lawes had received his metal detector as a retirement gift, and it was being used for an extremely practical purpose rather than a planned archaeological expedition. As he investigated the strong signal, he discovered several ancient objects, including coins and pieces of precious metal. Realizing that he had encountered something potentially significant, Lawes and Whatling reported the discovery instead of attempting to remove the entire collection themselves. Archaeologists from the Suffolk Archaeological Unit were subsequently involved, allowing the buried material to be excavated carefully and systematically. That decision proved crucial because the arrangement of objects and surviving traces of their containers offered historians information that would have been lost through uncontrolled digging.
