Archaeologists stunned after 13-year old’s remarkable metal detector find

Every once in a while, through chance encounters, people find objects that belong to a different civilization that lived thousands of years ago.

A 13-year-old playing with a metal detector experienced this incredible phenomenon, uncovering an artefact that archaeologists dated to the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age, named after the metal that is produced by mixing one part tin with nine parts copper, took place between approximately 3300 BCE and 1200 BCE.

After Milly, a teenager from Suffolk, was using the metal detector when it began to ping, indicating that there was something buried. Milly called over her dad, and the pair told the BBC that they thought that it could be an axe that someone had forgotten about ages ago... little did they know just how right they were.

Archaeologists are called in

The father-daughter duo reported what they had found to the local coroner, and a team of archaeologists was sent to the site they had stumbled upon by chance while on an organized trip, according to the BBC.

Before the experts arrived, the pair had found around 20 Bronze Age tools, most of which were axes; later, another 45 would be uncovered. Archaeologists estimated that the axes were from around 1300 BCE.

The teenager told the BBC that if the British Museum did want to purchase the artefacts, she would split the benefits with the landowner.

The use of metal detectors has made finding these treasures more common. In December 2019, a self-proclaimed metal detectorist named David Stuckey found a trove of more than 60 Bronze Age artefacts in Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire, around 13 miles from where Milly found her ancient stash.

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