They were moving forward in a line across the 10 sq metre trench, volunteer excavators elbow to elbow with academics, and Joe Fitzpatrick was at the far edge.
He was digging around the hearth of a building, about 60cm (2ft) below surface level, when he hit the earth twice with his mattock and out it popped – a rare bronze spear butt, a metal fitting placed over the end of a wooden shaft to counterbalance the spear head. Covered in Pictish inscriptions, it had remained buried for more than one and a half millennia, and was one of the most groundbreaking archaeological discoveries of 2024 in Scotland.
