Mysterious Havering Hoard – Largest Ever Bronze Age Hoard Discovered In London

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - The Havering Hoard consists of more than 450 bronze objects dating between 900 and 800 B.C. These objects are ancient weapons, including axe heads, spearheads, fragments of swords, daggers, knives, and some unusual objects.

Credit: Museum of London

Discovered in east London, this significant find is widely considered a Bronze Age mystery and despite a thorough examination of these ancient weapons, the Havering Hoard raises many unanswered questions.

Who were the people who buried the Havering Hoard? Could this treasure have been a religious offering? Were they hoping to recycle the metal or control access to the material? Was it a rejection of bronze tools as iron technology emerged?

Some of the ancient weapons included in the Havering Hoard. Credit: Museum of London

“We can tell a lot about what life was like for Bronze Age people living in this part of London.

Hoarding is something we see a lot of in the late Bronze Age.

We don’t have all the answers. Our knowledge of the Bronze Age is quite fragmentary. But every time we find something it gives us another piece in that jigsaw puzzle,” curator Kate Sumnall told the PA news agency.

She said: “This may have been a store, for a metal worker, or some sort of offering to the gods perhaps. We don’t know.

Excavation of the Havering Hoard. Credit: Museum Of London/PA

It may have been for recycling. Bronze can be melted down and recast almost an infinite number of times.

There are a lot of overlaps between what we know about the Bronze Age and today.

There was climate change, but that was part of a natural pattern, and so water levels were rising.

If settlements were adjacent to rivers, people may have had to move and the weapons could have been buried then.”

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Historic England chief executive Duncan Wilson said: “This extraordinary discovery adds immensely to our understanding of Bronze Age life…

The opportunity to investigate here and ultimately unearth the remarkable hoards that have come to light was only possible because of the effective partnership between archaeologists and developer.”

The Havering Hoard is now will go on show for the first time in Havering Hoard: A Bronze Age Mystery, at the Museum Of London Docklands.

See also: More Archaeology News

“We’re thrilled to be able to display this momentous discovery for the first time at the Museum Of London Docklands as the centrepiece of a major exhibition in April 2020,” Roy Stephenson, London’s historic environment lead at the Museum Of London.

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer